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TIGR's aggressive approach looks set to pay off. Credit: TIGR

A private initiative has been launched in the United States to use state-of-the-art technology to sequence the entire human genome within the next three years — four years earlier than the target of efforts being run by the federal government.

The Applied Biosciences Division of Perkin-Elmer, based in Norwich, Connecticut, is teaming up with J. Craig Venter, president of The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Maryland, to form a company devoted to sequencing rapidly more than 99.9 per cent of the genome's three billion base pairs.

The ambitious goal is made possible, the principals say, by the launch of a $300,000 gene sequencer by Perkin-Elmer, known as the 3700 DNA Analyzer. This combines increased sensitivity and automation to lower dramatically the cost and raise the rate of sequencing.

Venter says the cost will be reduced to $0.10 per base pair (the government's effort costs about $0.50). This would put the overall price of sequencing the human genome at between $100 million and $300 million — far below the $3 billion government price.

The new company, to be located in Rockville, will house 200 to 230 of the new machines, which will be in operation by early 1999, say the executives. They say the operation will outstrip the capacity of all sequencing centres in the world combined, and that the company will act as a ‘beta test’ site for the new instrument.

Venter will leave TIGR to become president of the company, which is as yet unnamed. Its chairman will be Tony White, Perkin-Elmer's chairman, president and chief executive officer. Perkin-Elmer will own 80 per cent of the company, Venter and others the rest.

The company also intends to build an information-rich database adding information to raw sequence data which analyses it and thus makes it more valuable to scientists, companies and institutions. The goal, say the executives, is that the database should become “the definitive source of genomic and associated medical information”.

It will, for example, include all-important data on common variations in DNA called polymorphisms. Ultimately, the principals say, the project will lay the groundwork for new diagnostics and therapies tailor-made to the needs of individuals.

Venter says that the company plans to make the database available to researchers for a reasonable fee, and to limit its patent claims to between 100 and 300 therapeutically important genes. The company will make the raw data themselves publicly available without charge. But the value, Venter says, will be in the database. “This is going to be an extremely high value database and we expect extremely wide subscriptions.”

Some scientists have expressed fears that the company could at any time make the terms of access more onerous. Venter insists, however, that the data would not be “held hostage”, saying that such a move would be “morally wrong”.

The announcement was greeted cautiously but positively by the leaders of the government's Human Genome Project, who held a press conference with Venter and Michael Hunkapiller, the president of Perkin-Elmer's Applied Biosciences Division, on Monday (11 May) to respond to the news.

“We're hearing the discussion of a plan and not proof of the principle,” said Harold Varmus, the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He added that federal sequencing efforts at some dozen sequencing centres will continue “unabated for the moment”. The NIH is the major federal player in sequencing the genome, with the Department of Energy playing a smaller role.

Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at NIH, called the venture “significant” but warned that its ability to meet its ambitious timetable remains to be demonstrated. It would be “vastly premature”, he said, to alter current federal efforts in response to the news.

Ari Patrinos, the associate director of the Office of Biological and Environmental Research at the energy department, said the effort would “raise the bar” for government scientists, which would make them “even more productive”.

The notion that a company could use new technology rapidly to outstrip the government effort — which has sequenced just 3 per cent of the genome so far — has put the government's role into a dramatically new light. It raises the question of whether Congress would continue to support the government project at the same level when a simultaneous effort was being carried out speedily with private money.

But Varmus warned that the proposed venture “will be one component factored into a very complex research agenda”. Collins said that the plan to accelerate genome sequencing makes legislating against employment and insurance discrimination all the more urgent.