Human genome sequence declared finished at White House ceremony — jury still out on publication

In what might be considered a gracious move on the part of Celera Genomics, its CEO Craig Ventor shared the spotlight with Francis Collins, head of the publicly funded Human Genome Project at Monday's White House announcement of the completion of the human genome. There is universal agreement that the public effort is months to years behind Celera, although there is also agreement that without the data obtained by the public human genome project, Celera might not have made it to the finish line quite so soon. Including the public Human Genome Project allowed President Clinton and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who joined the festivities by satellite, to acknowledge the important contributions of hundreds of researchers from around the world. In addition to the US and the UK, Germany, France, Japan, and China all have genome centers that have contributed to the public project.

Mr Clinton and Mr Blair saluted the efforts of the scientists

In a carefully worded statement, Science editor-in-chief Donald Kennedy offered this observation:

"We're delighted by today's joint announcement by scientists with the Human Genome Project and Celera Genomics. The research leaders of both organizations deserve congratulations for their enlightened decision to merge their efforts in this productive collaboration. …

"Simultaneous, peer-reviewed publication of both the Celera and Human Genome Project data sets will enhance prospects for extending this remarkable accomplishment into human service. I am optimistic that this can be achieved, accompanied by publicly accessible posting of the primary sequence data." [emphasis added]

Kennedy was referring to the fact that the editors of Science are currently negotiating with both Celera and the Human Genome Project, to publish both data sets simultaneously. However, to do so would require that Science bend a long-standing rule that requires that sequence information published in Science be deposited in GenBank, the public database. Celera has steadfastly said its data would be available only on its own website. However, Science might be satisfied with a link from the Celera website to the public database, using as a precedent the case of Swiss-Prot, an independent website for protein sequence, which is linked to GenBank.

By Laura DeFrancesco