Celera to release genome data 19/2/04. By the Public Health Genetics Unit Celera Genomics, the company that 'raced' the public Human Genome Project to finish sequencing the human genome, will be depositing its human genome sequence, once only available by subscription, into the online database GenBank.

This will enable scientists to have free access to both versions of the sequenced human genome.

In 1998, Craig Venter announced that Celera could complete the decoding faster and more cheaply than the publicly funded Human Genome Project, which had been at work since 1985. The competition between the two projects came to an end when both published their draft sequences in 2001.

Feature: History of the Human Genome Project - Public versus private

The Human Genome Project went on to announce that they had completed decoding the human genome in 2003, the 50th anniversary of the discovery by Watson and Crick of the structure of DNA.

One significant difference between the two projects had always been that the public project members agreed to deposit their sequence into publicly accessible databases for immediate use by scientists. Celera kept its sequence private and announced they would sell subscriptions for access to the data.

Now that plan has been set aside and Celera's data will join the rest in the public domain. It had been claimed that Celera was not able to make money from the sale of the sequence data, when similar data was freely available. Celera Genomics now concentrates on therapeutic target and drug discovery.

Article courtesy of the Public Health Genetics Unit .