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 Dr John Sulston"The public should know."  real 28k |
Gene company wants to share
Human chromosomes contain the code for life
A private US company racing to decode all the genes in the human body says it still hopes to work closely with publicly-funded research organisations.
Our sole concern is that our data would be used by a competing database company - we want to protect the database from being pirated  |
Paul Gilman, Celera
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The statement follows an acrimonious fall out between Celera Genomics and researchers from the public organisations which include the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the UK Sanger Centre.
The row followed a meeting exploring possible collaboration and led to Dr John Sulston, Director of the Sanger Centre, saying: "The emerging truth is absolutely extraordinary. They really intend to establish a complete monopoly position on the human genome for a period of at least five years."
However, Celera has responded by saying its only concern is preventing any other private company exploiting its work, if it releases its data to the publicly-funded researchers.
Race to decode
Both the public and private teams are in the process of decoding the entire sequence of human DNA. They use different techniques but should both complete their initial drafts this year.
However, while the publicly-funded bodies post all their data on the internet, Celera is keeping its information secret and intends to patent the most useful sequences.
Scientists mapping the human genome hope to mine its secrets for information which could help in diagnosing and treating disease.
Celera's founder, Craig Venter, says its data will be much more valuable if it is compared and contrasted with the data produced by the public researchers. These scientists agree.
But on Monday, some of the public researchers revealed details of a meeting with Celera and said the proposed alliance had fallen apart before it had even started. They expressed regret because they thought shared data would be more accurate and, in the long run, more useful to all scientists.
"Little or no cost"
On Tuesday, Celera published a letter addressed to four senior researchers involved in the publicly-funded effort.
It reads: "Celera's goal is to both discover and broadly disseminate the human genome sequence. Given the costs and value of this effort, we attempted [at the meeting] to clarify a dissemination model that is fair and reasonable. Particularly for pure research applications, we foresee information being released at little or no cost to the end user."
Paul Gilman, Celera's director of policy planning, said he thought a public alliance with Celera could follow along the lines of a collaboration that has resulted in the near-complete sequencing of the genome of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster.
Celera worked with a team at the University of California Berkeley to sequence the fly's genome. It said in September the sequence was about 98% complete and plans to publish the information later this month.
The row followed a meeting exploring possible collaboration and led to Dr John Sulston, Director of the Sanger Centre, saying: "The emerging truth is absolutely extraordinary. They really intend to establish a complete monopoly position on the human genome for a period of at least five years."
However, Celera has responded by saying its only concern is preventing any other private company exploiting its work, if it releases its data to the publicly-funded researchers.
Race to decode
Both the public and private teams are in the process of decoding the entire sequence of human DNA. They use different techniques but should both complete their initial drafts this year.
However, while the publicly-funded bodies post all their data on the internet, Celera is keeping its information secret and intends to patent the most useful sequences.
Scientists mapping the human genome hope to mine its secrets for information which could help in diagnosing and treating disease.
 Craig Venter has been dubbed the Bill Gates of biotechnology
|
But on Monday, some of the public researchers revealed details of a meeting with Celera and said the proposed alliance had fallen apart before it had even started. They expressed regret because they thought shared data would be more accurate and, in the long run, more useful to all scientists.
"Little or no cost"
On Tuesday, Celera published a letter addressed to four senior researchers involved in the publicly-funded effort.
It reads: "Celera's goal is to both discover and broadly disseminate the human genome sequence. Given the costs and value of this effort, we attempted [at the meeting] to clarify a dissemination model that is fair and reasonable. Particularly for pure research applications, we foresee information being released at little or no cost to the end user."
Paul Gilman, Celera's director of policy planning, said he thought a public alliance with Celera could follow along the lines of a collaboration that has resulted in the near-complete sequencing of the genome of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster.
Celera worked with a team at the University of California Berkeley to sequence the fly's genome. It said in September the sequence was about 98% complete and plans to publish the information later this month.
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