Gao and GM, DoubleTwist is very serious and it just declares "war" directly against CRA. If they have located half of the human genes, CRA better announces their human gene findings soon. The gene locations and functions might be the real gold mines in the long run -- patentable and profitable w/o disputes, even the damn Clinton agreed those are patentable in early April. Land grabs PRs in full speed in the coming weeks for sure.
doubletwist.com
Monday May 8, 3:17 pm Eastern Time
UPDATE 1-DoubleTwist, Sun sell analysis of human genome
(Writes through with comments from Human Genome Project, more genome news)
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON, May 8 (Reuters) - Two California companies said on Monday they had teamed up to sell what they hope will eventually be a complete map of the collection of human genes, as provided by the publicly funded Human Genome Project.
The companies, DoubleTwist, Inc. and Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NasdaqNM:SUNW - news), said their alliance would allow subscribers to get a map and partial analysis of just over half the genes and eventually all 100,000 or so human genes off an Internet site.
``What we have found so far is approximately 65,000 genes,'' Nick Tsinoremas, director of research at Oakland-based DoubleTwist, told a telephone briefing. ``We are looking closely at another 40,000 potential genes.''
Researchers at the Human Genome Project welcomed the news, saying it was what they hoped people would do with their data.
``I think it's great,'' Dr. Robert Waterstone, director of the genome sequencing centre at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said in a telephone interview.
``We want to have everybody's brain power exerted on trying to figure out what the sequence means.''
Also on Monday, the international consortium that makes up the Human Genome Project said it had started its final phase of deciphering the 3 billion ``base pairs'' that make up the genome -- all the genes and related DNA.
The Project has a rough map of more than 90 percent of the genes and now will plug the holes, Waterstone said.
``To us it is pretty exciting to be at this stage at last where we can see the whole genome, see exactly what needs to be done and be able to move on to the next stage,'' he said.
``Now people like DoubleTwist and we ourselves are going to be able to not only put genes on ... chromosomes (but) we are getting a picture of just where the genes are.''
DNA is made up of 3 billion ``base pairs'' of molecules known as nucleotides. These nucleotides, known as A, C, T and G, pair up in the ladderlike formation of DNA's double helix.
Sequencing gets the order of the A, C, T and G but it takes additional work to find out where the genes lie in this code. This in itself is a long process but even harder will be finding out what the genes actually all do. Waterstone said it will probably take decades.
``Right now, most people are attacking this problem gene by gene and that is going to be a slow process,'' he said.
John Couch, chairman and chief executive officer of DoubleTwist, said it was starting the analysis, a process called annotation, and had teamed up with Sun to make the information available on the Internet to subscribers.
``We are ... announcing today the launch of a new product, the DoubleTwist human genome database,'' Couch said.
Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies can either subscribe to the database at the cost of $10,000 per ``seat'', which provides about 500 analyses a year, or by buying a stand-alone version of the annotation for $650,000.
Couch said academic researchers can buy both products at a discount. He said this is how the company plans to make money.
``We are not in the business of patenting genes,'' he said. ``We are in the business of proving information and analytical tools for genetic research.''
The company has already completed a partial analysis of the genes on chromosome 22. Also on Monday, a team of international scientists led by German and Japanese researchers said they had sequenced chromosome 21, which carries genes linked to Down's Syndrome, Alzheimer's disease and a range of other disorders.
Couch said his company will be competing with Celera Genomics (NYSE:CRA - news) (NYSE:PEB - news), which is doing its own sequencing and analysis of the human genome and selling it to subscribers. Celera said this week it had signed up its first academic subscriber, Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.
Sun, based in Palo Alto, said the DoubleTwist human genome database was created using Sun Enterprise 420R and 10K supercomputers.
``With today's announcement, the stage is set for a new era of discovery,'' Greg Papadopoulos, chief technology officer for Sun, said in a statement. ``What the Web browser is to the Internet, DoubleTwist.com is to the human genome. It makes this whole complex collection of information easy to use.''
biz.yahoo.com
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My suggestion: CRA should just buy DoubleTwist for $6 Bil ASAP :) |
