Re: Genomics [was Re: MEDIA: Celera profitability]

Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Tue, 28 Sep 1999 20:34:37 -0700 (PDT)

On Tue, 28 Sep 1999, Kathryn Aegis wrote:

> Robert Bradbury writes:
> >> Only on the basic components. Celera deliberately choose the 'fast and
> >> dirty' method, whereas the government-sponsored projects chose to focus
> >> on the full detailed information. Both should turn out to be useful for
> >> different kinds of applications.
> >
> >Thats what some of the government researchers would like to have
> >you believe.

Its a very complex game due to the competition involved. Merely producing sequences and "labeling" putative genes is insufficient currently. But doing anything more than that requires a fair amount of educated "human" intelligence which is in fairly short supply at this point.

Multiple companies had advertisements up at the TIGR Genome conference for "Bioinformatics" specialists.

>
> That's the phrase that Venter uses, in his many, many media appearances.
> (1999's Least Media-Shy Scientist) He is quite honest about the need for
> speed, and he does respect the quality of the work from the government
> projects.
>

Venter, is very sharp. It will not be easy for me to trump him if I decide to move forward with genome synthesis.

> Evidently the total number of genome components has been expanded recently,
> there was a blurb on the news a few days ago. Does anyone have additional
> info on this?

You will have to be more specific with regard to "genome components". I believe in the Drosophila genome there is a fair amount of controversy with regard to how many "real" genes there actually are (from 10-20 K genes).

Since we still have a very difficult time resolving # of genes in less complex genomes, the # of genes in more complex genomes (such as ours) is a real crapshoot.

Robert