washington

The genome researcher J. Craig Venter said last week that he was prepared to accompany officials of the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the Congress to make the case for more — not less — public funding for genome research.

His offer came as the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee called for Congress to investigate the role of the federally funded Human Genome Project in the light of the announcement that Venter and Perkin-Elmer are to launch a private initiative to sequence much of the human genome in the next three years (see above).

Senator Pete Domenici (Republican, New Mexico) told the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee that Congress needs to investigate the implications of the private proposal. “Somewhere in the formal committee setting we have to find out what [the new initiative] means,” Domenici said.

But Venter says he is keen for his private initiative to be seen as complementary to — and not in competition with — federally funded efforts. “It is going to be much better for science as a whole if we can find a way to work together to get the genome sequenced faster,” he says. “The worst thing that could happen would be any decrease in [federal] funding.”

Domenici suggested that the issue should be addressed in joint hearings by the Labor and Human Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over the NIH, and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which oversees the DOE. The NIH and DOE fund about two-thirds and one-third of the genome project, respectively.

“I put the money in a bill to pay for [the] genome [project]. And I put up everything the president asks for every time,” said Domenici, who played a prominent role in the launch of the Human Genome Project. “But now we've got this cloud hanging over that's suggesting that maybe we don't need to spend all that money. And I think we have to get the answer somewhere or another.”

James Jeffords (Republican, Vermont), the chairman of the Labor and Human Resources Committee, responded that the issue has his “top attention”, and added that he “will look into” holding hearings on the issue.

Senator Bill Frist (Republican, Tennessee), who chairs the subcommittee of the labour committee responsible for the NIH, said in a statement that it was “premature” to talk about abandoning the federal government's effort on the Human Genome Project.