The EMBL researchers claimed in a press release that no personally-identifying information on Lacks or her progeny could be gained from making the sequence public.

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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.

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DNA-sequence data in public databases acknowledges that progress is dependent on access.

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To the researchers' surprise, when they compared the sequence for their new protein with those already in the public databases, they discovered that it was actually the major vault protein.

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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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