Just another example of what the government can do the private sector can do
better, faster, and for less money.
Larry Fleming
51/1
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http://www.familytreemaker.com/users/f/l/e/Lawrence-R-Fleming/
-----Original Message-----
From: Parkinson's Information Exchange
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Judith Richards
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 1998 6:09 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list PARKINSN
Subject: News-Researchers speed up gene mapping
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
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