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

To: bob zagorin who wrote (708)	4/18/2001 1:28:27 PM
From: Bill Ounce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 746

Genomics research may be dead end (American Spectator article). This is an overall positive article on the Celera researchers who are not trying to hide breakthrough scientific understanding, even it does potentially undermine their business model. The human genome project has produced a book that we can't read, becasue it turns out it's not a book that makes sense by interpretating it as a linear sequence of codes. It's more a one-dimensional projection of a multi-dimensional puzzle interacting with protein game the genome produces. ^_^ spectator.org [...] "[O]ur understanding of the human genome has changed in the most fundamental ways. The small number of genes -- some 30,000 -- supports the notion that we are not hard wired. We now know the notion that one gene leads to one protein, and perhaps one disease, is false. [...] Nonetheless, Celera's message is not likely to comfort investors. Gene therapy holds out less promise as a result of this new understanding. At the press conference, a journalist asked Francis Collins if the smaller number of genes would make medical advances easier or more difficult. "I would say easier," he said. Every gene search is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. "Guess what? The haystack just got three times smaller." But when another journalist asked a similar question about the genes interacting combinatorially, Collins retreated from the haystack metaphor. The straw interacts with itself, and the needle has other objects bumping into it, he allowed. Craig Venter said more simply that when you consider there is maybe a "tenfold expansion" in the number of proteins compared to the number of genes, it "does indicate increased complexity." Celera will no doubt continue to sell its genome information to the big research institutions, to the pharmaceuticals, and to other biotechs -- for a while at least. And the biotechs with patents will continue to charge high prices to screen for "predisposing" genes; or for the rare but real disease-causing defects. [...] [ Not all biotechs have the integrity of Celera: ] [...] To some biotechs the new announcement came as something of an embarrassment. As Andrew Pollack pointed out in the New York Times: "Incyte Genomics advertises access to 120,000 human genes, including 60,000 not available from any other source. Human Genome Sciences says it has identified 100,000 human genes, and Double Twist 65,000 to 105,000. Affymetrix sells DNA-analysis chips containing 60,000 genes." Some of these genes have already been patented, but "if genes are not the whole story," Pollack added, "it also means those patents could be worth less." Or worthless. Venter told the London Observer that the head of a biotech company had phoned him in some distress because he had already done a deal with SmithKline Beecham to sell them the details of 100,000 genes. "Where am I going to get the rest?" the man asked. How long before someone starts comparing genes to tulips? [ Kind of hard to do when there are only 30,000 genes ^_^ ] [...]