Robert Bradbury writes:
>The actual URL is:
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/27/031l-092799-idx.html
>Clearly the government scientists and strategies have been
>scooped in this affair.
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.
>The *fundamental* problem that Celera faces is harvesting
>enough information from the project that they can come up
>with a few hundred unique patents to justify the investment.
>Can they do this? Probably.
It's not mentioned in the article, but Venter is banking on marketing a software library system, one that would allow Celera to sell subscriptions to a certain method of accessing and utilizing genome data. (Hence the little profile of the software developers at the bottom of the article.) His argument is that the government data will be free of charge, but it will be in raw form and difficult to sort through for specific purposes. Persons hoping to obtain patents using that data could use his library system for research and development in specialized areas.
Kathryn Aegis