Brazilian sugar growers are helping to finance another new project, to sequence the genome of sugar cane.
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.
At the core of this progress is the improving ability to sequence the human genome.
New machines from IBM and EMC will replace the supercomputers used to sequence the human genome.
Craig Venter tied (some say beat) the mighty U.S. government in the race to sequence the human genome.
He made headlines racing the government to sequence the human genome in 2000.
Before that, he was involved in the effort to sequence the human genome.
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"Our ability to grow Plasmodium in the fruit fly is especially fortunate because scientists recently determined the complete sequence of the Drosophila genome, " says Dr Shahabuddin.
The researchers, along with other scientists across the world, are now working to sequence the complete genome of other close relatives to humans, including gorillas and orangutans.
They enlisted the help of several scientists, including Eric Lander of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who went on to become a leading light in the effort to sequence the human genome.
But since the first draft sequence of the human genome was released in 2000, scientists have realized that junk DNA plays a key role in switching genes on and off.
The monumental effort to sequence the entire human genome -- to spell out the 3 billion or so combinations of those letters in a cell's DNA -- is keeping a lot of academic and commercial laboratories busy.
As well as leading China's contribution to the human genome sequence and working with Danish partners on the pig genome, this week the institute announced completion of a detailed map of the rice genome.
When the genome sequence was completed in 2001, the company was vindicated.
Earlier this year, Monsanto, a large biotechnology firm, announced a rough-and-ready sequence of the rice genome, and an international consortium is now trying to refine it.
The genome sequence may also prove a boon to vaccine makers.
The contrast between the beaming scientist and his falling stock begs the question that will determine Celera's fortune: How much money is the genome sequence really worth?
Having the genome sequence to hand should give researchers an opportunity to start tinkering with other Vibrio genes to see which are responsible for such collateral damage, and perhaps to deactivate them in existing formulations.
Last week, Celera announced it had delivered 1.2 billion base pairs of the humane genome sequence to its subscribers.
Cholera is far from beaten, but the new genome sequence will provide another useful stick to continue its thrashing.
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.
This morning, scientists at the National Genome Health Research Institute announced plans to sequence the genes of 1, 000 patients with heart disease using the machines being made by Illumina.
Though the firm has proved the principle, a single pore would take about 70 days to sequence an entire human genome (which has roughly the same number of letters as 1, 000 Russian novels).
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From this humble beginning it now plans to sequence 200 full human genomes as part of an international collaboration called the 1, 000-genome project.
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Dr. Lin has created a crowd sourcing model where patients and their families can raise funds through social networking, use those funds to sequence a genome using services such as IGS, partner with geneticists willing to help interpret the results, and then make the case to pharmaceutical companies to pursue novel treatments based on solid biological data.
Back then, Celera Genomics (nyse: CRA - news - people ) and the publicly funded Human Genome Project (HGP) had yet to show off their drafts of the human DNA sequence and Celera's market cap was nearly eight times what it is now.
Ten years after the completion of the human genome project, competition between instrument makers and attempts to capture medical value from DNA sequence data continue to make the news.
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