| [ sciEncE ] in KIDS 글 쓴 이(By): deepblue ( -- 海 --) 날 짜 (Date): 1999년 3월 19일 금요일 오전 10시 49분 30초 제 목(Title): [펌]Genome Project Leaps Forward http://chemweb.com./alchem/1999/news/nw_990318_genome.html David Nicholson 18 March 1999 Efforts to complete the entire human genetic code have progressed faster than expected, according to the agencies behind the Human Genome Project. This week they announced that the work is 18 months further on than previously forecast, meaning that 90 per cent of the 3 billion chemical letters in the human genetic code will be ready for publication in spring next year. Beyond this, the researchers expect to have a final high-quality sequence of the genome by 2003, or possibly earlier. The importance of the project has been stressed repeatedly by scientists, who view it as the basis for much of the medical advances which will be possible during the next century. The impetus for acceleration has come from rival research projects funded by the private sector. Instead of the UK-based research charity Wellcome Trust working in collaboration with the US government's National Institutes of Health, two US companies are compiling their own gene sequences. Incyte expects to complete the sequencing of "all commercially relevant human genes" by the end of next year, whilst Celera (a subsidiary of Perkin-Elmer) is looking at the end of 2001 as a completion date. At stake is unfettered access to the information. The UK/US publicly funded research "can ensure that sequence data remains in the public domain for access by all researchers for the development of future healthcare treatments," said Wellcome Trust Genome Campus chief executive Michael Morgan. "This is crucial for the real medical benefits to be realised efficiently." Even so, Morgan and his fellow researchers do not rule out some form of collaboration with commercial companies, since it could allow faster progress to be made. In the three years to date of the project's pilot phase, the five laboratories - four in the US and one in the UK - have improved both speed and accuracy of the work. The cost of DNA sequencing has fallen from $2 per chemical letter to 20 cents and they estimate that the sequences contain no more than one error in 100,000 chemical letters. Following the announcement of rapid progress, the next step is likely to be a consortium aiming to discover genetic differences between people, leading to information on why people respond differently to medication. |