Tying that knowledge to the exact genetic sequence will be a big step forward.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the genetic sequence of the virus on Monday.
The UK's Health Protection Agency (HPA) published the full genetic sequence of the case in London earlier this month.
He used up all three years trying to find a genetic sequence that matched the protein--a task that could be done quickly today.
She said she envisioned a "black box" where the genetic sequence goes in and a simple report that can be used by hospital staff comes out.
As every biomedical scientist knows, GenBank is a free, public database of genetic sequence data that contains millions of sequences, from humans, bacteria, viruses, you name it.
Once the genetic sequence of the zebrafish is known, scientists will be able to make changes to the animal's DNA to study how human inherited diseases might arise.
Besides lighting a fire under the public side of the project, this technique enabled Dr Venter and his collaborators to publish the first complete genetic sequence of a living organism, a bacterium called Haemophilus influenzae.
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While health officials caution that there are no indications the virus can be transmitted from one person to another, scientists who have studied its genetic sequence said this week that the virus may have recently mutated into a form that spreads more easily to other animals, potentially posing a bigger threat to humans.
These are short segments in which the sequence of genetic letters repeats itself.
This is enough to produce a completely different sequence of genetic chunks - and results in the cell beginning to produce proteins that the virus can use to reproduce itself.
Dr. Friend found a company willing to sequence the patients' entire genetic codes for free.
It's also the 10th anniversary of the completion of the Human Genome Project, which set out to sequence the more than 3 billion letters in our genetic code.
The test literally untwists the virus' genetic material, allowing researchers to create a gene-by-gene sequence of it.
Case in point: On Monday, DeCode Genetics published an important genetic map--assembled by methods very different from those used to create the sequence of the human genome--that will make it much easier for scientists to hunt down new genes linked to disease.
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