http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2556064202-b4c 09:30 PM ET 09/14/98 U.S. researchers speed up genome search WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. government researchers, perhaps spurred on by competition from the private sector, said Monday they were speeding up plans to map all the genes in the human body. They say they now plan to finish their project by 2003, two years ahead of schedule. ``These new goals are ambitious, even audacious,'' Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), said in a statement. ``When we looked at the facts, considered the opportunities, and tried to project forward five years, we have always done better than we thought we could. If there was ever a time to spark the imagination of the scientific community and the public, it is now.'' The Human Genome Project, a collegial international research project including government and academic laboratories, has had a fire lit underneath it by not one but two private undertakings. In May Craig Venter, president and director of The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), said he was starting up a commercial rival to the project. He said he was leaving the company he founded to team up with Norwalk, Connecticut-based Perkin-Elmer and create a new firm, to be called Celera, that will use faster machines and a less-painstaking method to race through the collection of DNA that makes up the human genome. Last month Incyte Pharmaceuticals Inc. said it had plans to map most of the human genome -- the whole collection of genes and ``junk DNA'' -- within a year. No one is sure how many genes there are in the human body, but estimates range between 60,000 and 100,000. Genes are made up of ``base pairs'' of chemicals all strung together. The mapping projects aim to find the beginning and end of each sequence and pick out the genes from junk DNA, which seems to have no function. Knowing what genes do will help scientists better understand diseases and to develop new and better drugs to fight them. -- Judith Richards, London, Ontario, Canada [log in to unmask] ^^^ \ / \ | / Today’s Research \\ | // ...Tomorrow’s Cure \ | / \|/ ```````