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Venter's DNA Major Source of Celera's Database
dh003i writes "According to this article, Dr. Craig Venter's DNA is the major source of Celera's database of the human genome. Interesting stuff." Includes interviews with lots of aggravated geneticists.
"Monetary motivation is needed to keep innovation at its current rate" ...
Huh? How bout your example of drug companies... whatever it is that they need, it isn't money.
Sorry, but in many cases, those who truly love what they do, do it for alot less. There are days, that a $100,000 grant to some unknown researcher in a backwater university, is worth $10 billion in pharmcorp capital.
What the world needs, is fewer greedmongers and profitsluts. This reminds me too much of the current intellectual property fiasco, where the RIAA claims that if they only have $5 billion in sales, instead of $6 billion, they'll starve and no music will ever be recorded again for the next 1000 years.
Hm.. the big issue is not really from whom the genome came from, but the fact that they used only one human to claim their complete sequence dataset. More serious attempts to map the human genome requires a lot more thorough examination, repeats, multiple sequencings etc.
The stakeholders should not complain about from whom the genome came form, but instead that the data generated is uncertain. I mean.. a scientific experiment with only one source, which was until now even not known to the public (or stakeholders).
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Same reason as including Easter Eggs in your software. Down the road, when you don't get paid, you have some proof that it is your code.
Or perhaps- if you were dedicating several years of your life to a project, wouldn't you want it to be YOU that was the basis for all furtherment of human medical understanding of genetics? (tradition usually uses the wife, but that gets icky in medical related stuff)
That or pure unabashed ego.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
Given that Celera's methodologies for genetic assay are currently the subject of fairly heated debate, I wonder if it makes any difference whose DNA is used.
As a forenote, I'm the one who submitted this story.
To me, as a undergrad majoring in molecular biology, this is interesting but not a disaster.
All of us are for the most part almost completely identical at the genetic level. More than 99.99% of our DNA is probably the same. Most of the variation in our DNA is likely due to selfish elements and "junk DNA" where variation is irrelevant. When it comes down to what separates you from me from Dr. Venter, you'd be surprised that it might come down to a relatively few locations on the genome, and very subtle changes.
Of course, for those few areas where there is some variation in the human genome, this may be important. But how important? So his genome is *most* of Celera's database, as opposed to the genome of 5 randomly selected people. Having a sample of 5 individual's hardly gives due account to diversity in the genome anyways. Besides, much of our diversity is in things which don't matter from a medical point of view: what makes our eyes and hair different colors, our faces different shapes, and other superficial largely irrelevant differences.
An interesting benefit to Dr. Venter's bypassing Celera's random selection process may be that we may in some cases see how phenotype relates to genotype. For example, what exactly is it in Dr. Venter's genome which gives him that most hideous smile which makes him look like a poster for the movie, "The Clowns"? Seriously, there may be some interesting studies to be done, provided Venter is willing.
I'm not saying he did this for all the right reasons. It was, of courses, a selfish act. I think he did this out of eccentricism and curiousity about himself. Richard Dawkin's book is titled, "The Selfish Gene," not "The Benevolent Gene".
I'm not saying I particularly like Venter, or Celera. Celera indeed leached off of the public project, and could've never accomplished what they did without doing so. Also, the public project was headed by Crick. When Waston and Crick discovered the structure of DNA, they didn't hide it and make the world pay for it; they showed it to the world. That was the attitude of true scientists: Even Rosaline Franklin, who's work was used without her permission to determine the structure of DNA by Watson/Crick, wasn't bitter, and wanted the work to be published. I believe she said something along the lines of, "It doesn't matter. It's beuatiful." The discovery of the structure of DNA was made available to us all -- because that's the attitude of true scientists, and because its something that belongs to us all. Celera and Venter, however, have abandoned that tradition. On the bright side, Celera does offer public access to their database with a free registration. The payed-for access gives you a superior genome browser which allows you to find material much easier.
I believe that the essay in the beginning of Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton about the biotechnology revolution captures the essence of what I'm thinking of.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Well, I don't see any problem with Celera using the public data.
The problem is hypocrisy. When Celera was just gearing up to begin sequencing, I recall that Venter testified in front of Congress, claiming that the entire public effort was a waste of the taxpayer's money, and that the government should let Celera do the job alone, because it would do it much better and much faster.
As it turned out, Celera relied heavily on the existing public sequence to assist in their assembly (this is not an uncommon technique - but in light of that testimony, it smacks of hypocracy).
The analogy with open source software is a good one, in light of the company's attempts to patent gene sequences from their assemblies (see previous slashdot articles on this)
Furthermore the discovery of saccharin as a sweet substance was due to self-experimentation, as well as LSD by Albert Hofmann (his bosses wouldn't believe the psychedlic effects from such a low dose, they had to try it themselves).