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The common thread a story of science, politics, ethics, and the human genome
| Series: | |
| Publisher: | Washington, D.C. : Joseph Henry Press |
| Authors: | John Sulston |
| Pages: | 1360 pages |
| Binding: | Hardcover |
| ISBN: | 9780593048016 |
| Call No: | QH 445.2 S85 2002 |
The highly publicized events leading up to the 2001 publication of the Human Genome draft sequences in Nature (the public sequence) and Science (Celera's private, i.e., patented, sequence) form the outline of these absorbing, accessible, and complementary books. The stories go back 15-plus years, the cast of characters is large and international, and the events are still a work in progress. Sulston won this year's Nobel prize in medicine and physiology and formerly headed the Sanger Centre, Cambridge, United Kingdom, a major Human Genome sequencing center. Here, he gives a firsthand account of the excitement, hard work, vision, and daring needed to move from worm biology to recommending sequencing of the human genome, while senior and influential colleagues argued vigorously against it. He speaks forcefully of the necessity of keeping the sequence public and freely available. While Americans played a major part in this drama, it is good to have the European perspective and influences represented.