The Race Is Over

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Within a year, TIGR had published the entire genome of Haemophilus influenzae, a bacterium with nearly 2 million letters that causes meningitis and ear and respiratory infections. It was the first free-living organism to be completely sequenced. Even Watson was impressed, calling it "a great moment in science."

Still, many researchers considered shotgunning crude and inaccurate. By this time, Venter's relationship with Human Genome Sciences had soured over quarrels about patenting and publication of data, and he and TIGR split with HGS. Other labs were now in the shotgunning game--though of the 30 or so organisms decoded to date, two-thirds were decoded by TIGR, with results that are generally acknowledged to be of high quality.

In 1998, when Hunkapiller showed Venter his new ABI Prism 3700, a sequencer five times as fast and even more highly automated, Venter formed a partnership with Hunkapiller's company, Applied Biosystems (now PE Biosystems). Venter named his new outfit Celera, from the Latin for "quick." It was. Backed with an infusion of $300 million from his new collaborator, Venter boldly announced that he would sequence and assemble the entire human genome by the year 2001.

Venter's challenge jolted the lumbering Human Genome Project into a long-overdue overhaul. It cut back to four (now five) major centers. The Brits coughed up more money, and the consortium even began buying some of Hunkapiller's hot new machines. Collins admits that Venter "stirred the pot."

Venter first targeted the genome of an old laboratory favorite, the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, whose genes have many counterparts in humans. By March he had succeeded in sequencing its genome--work that ultimately helped break down the barriers between Venter and Collins. The latter had implied all along that Venter could not be trusted to release gene sequences to the public, despite promises that he would. "This was a major frustration," said Venter last week. "Fundamentally, nobody believes you're going to release the data. Your integrity is constantly being challenged."

In March, Venter eased the minds of other scientists by releasing the Drosophila data; moreover, he had done the research in collaboration with Gerald Rubin, now vice president for biomedical research at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and highly respected at DOE and NIH. "Rubin reassured us all that this was someone to trust," Patrinos said last week.

Somewhat unconvincingly, Venter now denies he was ever racing the HGP. "To me it's really a race to impact people's lives," he says. Collins, who has been pooh-poohing the idea of a race, insists in an almost perfectly crafted sound bite that "the only race involved here is the human race."

The big question is whether, with the publicly funded project's data online, there will be a market for Celera's products. Venter says yes. He'll be offering sophisticated, contamination-free, gilt-edged data, he explains, that include the comparative genomes of other species and the genetics of specific diseases, plus special proprietary software to analyze this genetic mother lode.