[I, Librarian]
  • [Photo] Jason Stajich • August 28, 2000
    ``Unprecedented fanfare greeted the June 26 announcement that scientists had completed a draft of the human genome sequence. The truth is, however, that figuring out the order of the letters in our genetic alphabet was the easy part. Now comes the hard part: deciphering the meaning of the genetic instruction book. Several companies have sprouted up to provide bioinformatics tools, software and services [see `The Business of the Human Genome,' Scientific American, July]. Their success, though, may hinge on a peaceful spot south of England's University of Cambridge. It is home to the Sanger Center, the U.K. partner in the publicly funded Human Genome Project (HGP) consortium, and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), Europe's equivalent of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Institutes of Health. Sanger and EBI are collaborating on the Ensembl project, which consists of computer programs for genome analysis and the public database of human DNA sequences. New DNA sequences arrive in bits and pieces; automated routines scan the sequences, looking for patterns typically found in genes. `One of the important things about Ensembl is that we're completely open, so you can see all our data, absolutely everything,' says EBI's Ewan Birney.''

    Full story in Scientific American, September 2000:
    http://www.sciam.com/2000/0900issue/0900scicit2.html

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