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Biotech / Medical : ARIAD Pharmaceuticals -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike McFarland who wrote (326)	8/20/1998 6:48:00 PM
From: Mike McFarland	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4474

...and another link at which I found the phrase Expressed Sequence Tags ww2.altavista.digital.com@2185@bionet%2edrosophila%26Expressed+Sequence+Tags In which Robert Moss wrote this Journal article summary (fyi you can get on his email list and subscribe to a year worth of his summaries for $12, you may want to visit the link above, as I have not included the full text of his usenet posting) (I guess the thing that catches my eye is the part in bold, especially when you consider this sentence I snipped from Jongman's Ariad news release link--"In fact, Pangea's clustering tools allow millions of ESTs to be rapidly analyzed with unprecedented precision") (snip) 2. Venter et al: SHOTGUN SEQUENCING OF THE HUMAN GENOME: Science, v. 280, p.1540: June 5, 1998 The Human Genome Project is scheduled to complete its sequence of the three billion base pairs of human genomic DNA in 2005, for an estimatedcost of $3 billion. Although the project has been ahead of schedule in mapping DNA markers, actual sequencing has been fairly slow going. Current sequencing technology involves flourescent labeling of DNA fragments generated by the Sanger dideoxy chain termination method, and automated sequencing. The limiting step in sequencing is building "sequence ready" maps covering large areas of the genome. A number of smaller genomes have been sequenced using a different approach, a whole-genome "shotgun" method. Unordered DNA fragments are randomly cloned and sequenced, and the order of the fragments is determined by overlapping the completed sequences. In this paper, the authors describe a new commercial joint venture between The Institute for Genomic Research and Perkin-Elmer Applied Biosystems. The latter company has announced a new fully automated sequencer, capable of processing 1,000 samples per day with only 15 minutes hands-on operator time. This compares with 8 hours for the previous model. The authors propose to complete the human sequence in only 3 years,at a cost of $200-$250 million, including the computational and laboratory infrastructure required for the task. The lab will contain 230 automated sequencers, with a combined daily sequencing capacity of 100 million bases. Their approach involves randomly breaking genomic DNA into segments of various sizes, and cloning into multiple vectors. A plasmid library containing inserts of approximately 2 kb will be supplemented by a library of plasmids with 10 kb inserts. This will allow multiple overlapping sequences, andreduce the number of sequences that are unclonable or under-represented in one of the libraries. The goal is to generate 70 million sequences totaling 35 billion base pairs, covering the entire genome ten times. To make ordering the sequences easier, and check the reliability of their results, the sequences will be compared to 30,000 known Sequence Tagged Site (STS) markers, as well as Expressed Sequence Tags (EST). (emphasis added--mm) Once the project is completed, the group intends to make the actual sequence data available free of charge, without restrictions. They expect to earn online access fees, and market the database system to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies as well. (snip) - Please feel free to distribute or forward this particular issue. - If you would like to contribute summaries of articles you find particularly interesting, please email them to me. The summary will retain your name as contributor. And if I use your summary, I will tack on a month to your subscription as a small "thank you". - Please let me know if there are topics you would like me to cover in the "background" section, or questions you would like addressed about any of these articles or topics.Email questions or comments to Bob Moss, MOSSRE@WOFFORD.EDU end of Moss article Even to a goofball like me, it does seem that the speed with which the computational part of this science is accellerating, that biotechnology is hurtling toward some discoveries. I'm just a gambler with too much time on his hands, but I feel pretty comfortable owning a handful of biotech companies at this point...even if the markets have been punishing me of late. For futher reading, the NG's of interest seem to start with bionet, although there are probably others. eom