Craig Venter Nobel Prize poll

[Shredder]

hmm how do i create a poll...

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[reddirtgirl]

why?

 

[Shredder]

oh ok there it is. for creating shotgun sequencing and expediting the human genome project by manyfold

 

[reddirtgirl]

oh ok there it is. for creating shotgun sequencing and expediting the human genome project by manyfold

that's all common knowledge. just not so sure about the "solely" part.

at the very least collins gets part credit

 

[Doctor&Geek]

Francis Collins before Ventner any day. Hell I'd even pick up Waterston before Ventner.

 

[captaintripps]

Peter Duesberg should be considered in the discussion.

 

[mjs]

I am a MD/PhD at UW and several of my colleagues and professors here have worked at genome sequencing centers during the race, so I know a little bit about this debate.

I would recommend a little light reading before we get on the red phone to stockholm on anybody's account. If you haven't discussed it with someone who has worked in a sequencing center and/or read John Sulston or James Shreeve's book on the subject, you have very little idea of how weird the 'genome race' was. I would say give them a peruse.

But since they cost money, I'll just post some articles getting to the crux of the matter.

A series of five articles in PNAS on the nature of the debate over the Celera:

Waterston, Sulston and Lander on the Celera method.
article 1, article 2

Venter and co.'s statements:
article 1, article 2

And lastly, my personal favorite... an article by Maynard Olson:
A player's perspective.
The congressional testimony is the real humdinger.

On the subject of genome science, there are few people with as intriguing careers in science as John Sulston, who was a pioneer in C. elegans biology and genomics. His publication list, which can be checked out at PubMed, is perhaps the most terse and tantalizing of any living biologist. He won the Nobel in 2002.

 

[reddirtgirl]

I am a MD/PhD at UW ...
I'll just post some articles getting to the crux of the matter.

A series of five articles in PNAS on the nature of the debate over the Celera:

Waterston, Sulston and Lander on the Celera method.
article 1, article 2

Venter and co.'s statements:
article 1, article 2

And lastly, my personal favorite... an article by Maynard Olson:
A player's perspective.
The congressional testimony is the real humdinger.

On the subject of genome science, there are few people with as intriguing careers in science as John Sulston, who was a pioneer in C. elegans biology and genomics. His publication list, which can be checked out at PubMed, is perhaps the most terse and tantalizing of any living biologist. He won the Nobel in 2002.

Thanks for the links.

I got the James Shreeve book for christmas... (from a celera co-founder )

I also went to a lecture a few months ago by Leroy Hood. From what I can gather, he might have a pretty big, if not integral part in all this... w/o Hood, would AP/PE (applied biosystems/ perkin elmer) have the role(s) they did? W/O AP/PE, would there have been a Cerlera & a finished sequence? .... not the most useful questions, but kinda interesting to imagine.

 

[Shredder]

Venter is still the first author on the publication

 

[mjs]

Yeah, Hood's lab designed the sequencers that everyone uses and AP was born of that design. He's done a lot of stuff in high throughput biology since then and right now he's running an institute in Seattle. A friend of mine works there. They do cool stuff.

Also, AP was (is?) the parent company of Celera. Ton of stuff about that in the Shreeve book.

There would have been a finished sequence either way. The finished sequence was not that far ahead of schedule. The 'race' was to publish a working draft.

Venter is still the first author on the publication

He's the author on one of the two papers describing the human genome. That's the one in contention in the links I posted.

If you are interested in this stuff, I urge you to read the books by Shreeve and Sulston. You'll see the science is complicated and the politics were pretty messy on both sides. There was a lot of money in the pipelines and everybody wanted their share.

It is important to recognize that not nearly as many people use Celera's human genome sequence as the public data. The stuff on NCBI is from the public project and it's free. They also failed to follow up with mouse* and chimp work. Now the company is doing gosh knows what.

Also, I think Venter's seawater sequencing project is pretty neat.

*Mouse genome: probably my favorite paper.

 

[reddirtgirl]

The Human Genome Project Part 2: The Private Effort and Beyond
October 28 and November 2, 2004

oh... the drama...

of course, not all the links to Science articles really work... unless you have a username/password.

 

[mjs]

Is that a fan page?