Celera to Announce Human Genome Is Complete, But Is It?

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Celera Genomics (Rockville, MD) is about to announce that the human genome is finished. However, this may be more a matter of semantics (and a public relations ploy) than a real scientific achievement, since the finish line has been inching steadily backward. While at one time it was agreed upon that the genome would be considered complete when 99% of the nucleotides were in place, that number has now dropped to a mere 90% in the soon-to-be announced genome map.

This announcement, when it is made, will be substantially ahead of the projected times to completion. In part, this can be attributed to the availability of information coming from the publicly funded Human Genome Project, which is deposited on a daily basis in the public database, GenBank. In contrast, Celera, while making portions of its sequence available on its own web site, has not deposited any of it in GenBank. While this might seem like a small point, it actually will come into play as decisions on publication are made.

The Times is also reporting that editors at the journal Science are grappling with the issue of whether to publish the Celera results. The Times reports that scientists from the Human Genome Project are applying pressure for the journal not to publish.

The decision may come easier to Nature, whose policy calls for the deposition of genome data in "a reliable, publicly available, unrestricted, and free database" as a precondition for publication.

By Laura DeFrancesco