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Biotech / Medical : Celera Genomics (CRA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike McFarland who wrote (6)	7/28/1999 8:15:00 PM
From: Dr Goodhybe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 746

MMF copied a Celera newslink: "Celera Genomics ... announced today that it has completed one million sequences, the equivalent of over 500 million base pairs -- letters of genetic code -- of Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly..." Their estimate of the size of the genome (165 Mb total; 120 Mb euchromatic) is correct, but to say that they have four-fold coverage of the euchromatic portion of the genome and aren't finished yet (that "Celera expects to complete the random sequencing phase of Drosophila in early September ... entail[ing] completing another 2 million sequences--or about 1 billion letters of genetic code...") doesn't fill me with confidence. It sounds like completion when they've gotten 1.5 Gb of sequence, or twelve-fold coverage, is no better (if not worse) than the coverage of sequence assembly in existing government and academic genome centers (6-8 fold coverage is considered the usual value [Lander & Waterman]). I thought Celera was supposed to have this really rip-roaring combination shotgunning & BAC-end sequencing approach that was supposed to reduce the needed sequence coverage dramatically (as discussed by Myers in his talk at GSAC-X last September 19th in Miami). I suppose they're to be commended for their high-throughput, but where's the expected efficiency of genomic sequence assembly? Doctor Goodhybe