810 NATURE BIOTECHNOLOGY VOL 18 AUGUST 2000 http://biotech.nature.com

IN BRIEF

Joint genome announcement

On June 26, Francis Collins, director of theinternational Human Genome Project (HGP)consortium finally announced that the HGPhad completed a “rough assembly” of thehuman genome sequence. Joining Collins atthe White House was Craig Venter, presidentof Celera Genomics (Rockville, MD), longseen as the rival of the HGP. Celeraannounced it too had “completed” its own assembly of the human genome,which it “finished” sequencing in April (Nat. Biotechnol., 18, 475, 2000). Bothparties’ work is expected to be published simultaneously later this year.Although the announcements were hyped by some scientists as being on parwith the 1969 moon landing, most acknowledge that it will be years before sci-entists find all the genes that make up the sequence or before many of thosegenes yield useful therapeutics. Indeed, Celera’s stock, and that of many othergenomics companies, was down following the announcement, after muchinflation the previous week when word of the joint briefing leaked out. By theclose of the market on June 27, Celera stock had dropped almost 22% over twodays, to $99.50.

Meanwhile, the news spurred new talk of concerns over genetic privacy anddiscrimination. But just days after the joint announcement, the US Senate reject-ed a bill that would have afforded broad protections against genetic discrimina-tion in the workplace and from insurance companies, saying it would have led totoo many lawsuits. JG

Cloning opera

In September, audiences in Cambridge (UK)will be treated to a rare mix of music, theol-ogy, and genetics at the world premiere of“Parthenogenesis,” a new musical theaterwork by British composer James MacMillan.The work was inspired by a story of a virginbirth (no, not that one) in Hanover,Germany, in 1944. A young woman caughtby the blast of an Allied bomb gave birthnine months later to a daughter whose fin-gerprints, blood type, and other indicatorswere identical to those of her mother.Physicians suggested that the bomb blastcould have jarred a somatic cell within thewoman’s womb, triggering parthenogenesis.

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NZ de facto GMO ban

The environmental agency in NewZealand, the Environmental Risk

Management Authority (ERMA), isimposing draconian strictures onresearchers undertaking the most basic ofmanipulations of genetic material. ERMAmakes no distinctions between experi-ments performed for release and thoseconducted in contained laboratories.Furthermore, ERMA requires centralizedand costly relicensing of what, by interna-tional standards, would be judged themost routine experiments with the slight-est of changes to protocols. The use of bio-logical materials from international col-laborators is, in effect, banned by theimposed necessity for New Zealandresearchers to pay $1400 per applicationto import GM organisms. JH

A good story, yet Macmillan’s grip on genet-ics is, perhaps understandably, a little tenu-ous. Sections of the score feature an actressspeaking the part of the unborn partheno-genetic child. Her accompaniment, saysMacMillan, is “material based on the geneticsequencing of Adenine-Cytosine-Thymine-Guanine, currently being mapped in theHuman Genome Project, which is providingscientists with a supposed calculation ofhumanity.” JH

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Chimp genome project

Japan’s Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN; SaitamaPrefecture) has announced the launch of an ambitious project to elucidatewhat makes us human. Based on the theory that intellectual ability—mostnotably language and logical thinking—distinguishes humans from nonhu-man primates such as chimpanzees, the project will compare chimp andhuman genomes, focusing on genes expressed in the language center of thebrain. RIKEN’s Genomic Sciences Center (GSC) and its Brain Science Institutewill carry out the project, which will start officially in April 2001. YoshiyukiSakaki, who leads Japan’s human genome sequencing effort, will be director ofthe project, which will also compare cognitive genetic data from GSC’s mousegenome database. It is expected that data from Kyoto University’s PrimateResearch Institute (Inuyama City), which has long researched primate behav-ior, will also be used by RIKEN to study the genetic basis of behavioral patterns. AS

© 2000 Nature America Inc. • http://biotech.nature.com©

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