The Common Thread: A Story of Science, Politics, Ethics and the Human Genome (2003) 1/10/05. Reviewed by Jon Turney Mild-mannered Englishman devotes life to worm, wins Nobel Prize.

These book selections are, of course, personal, but it is hard to leave out a horse's mouth account of the British contribution to the Human Genome Project on a Wellcome Trust website. Fortunately, Sir John Sulston's story of how his scientific life culminated in the effort to unravel the human gene sequence is well worth including. Although he enlisted science writer Georgina Ferry to help put the book together, it is written as if he is simply relating his own autobiography.

That would be scientifically interesting even if it only concerned the nematode worm he first studied when he joined the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge in 1969. But the nematode turned out to be the model organism for genome studies (a story also related in Andrew Brown's 'In the Beginning was the Worm'). And Sulston was caught up in the evolution of a massive new scientific enterprise. In 1989, this anti-materialist child of the 1960s trembled inwardly at the prospect of a million-pound grant. A few years later he was asking for 50 million - and he got it.

Feature: Why the worm?

Feature: History of the Human Genome Project: The worm leads the way

But even, or perhaps especially, when he rose to be director of the Wellcome Trust's new Sanger Centre in Cambridge, the heart of the UK's genome work, he upheld old ideals. In particular, he believed in the value of publicly-funded research, and in free access to information. This led to lengthy wrangling between scientists in the UK and the USA, and especially with the flamboyant Craig Venter, whose company Celera mounted a private sector genome project. Sulston's life became bound up with politics as well as science, with how to fend off bids to patent the genome as well as how to derive its sequence.

One suspects he exaggerates his own unworldiness, and occasional political naivety, as well as Venter's apparent disregard for the normal courtesies of scientific life. But there is no doubting the sincerity of Sulston's conviction that the details of human DNA should be a common property of all of us, not an asset used to inflate somebody's share price. It is also salutary to read how many of the twists and turns of the story reporters got wrong at the time because they failed to probe Venter's claims.

The eventual joint announcement by Tony Blair and then US President Bill Clinton that a full draft of the genome had been completed implied that the contest between the public and private teams had produced an honours even draw. But Sulston begs to differ, suggesting that the competition was rigged because Celera had access to the public-sector data, and not vice versa, as well as casting aspersions on the 'completeness' of their version.

Doubtless future historians will go into all this in detail, but this is a beguiling first account of what this great project felt like from the inside from one of the key players.

Book details

Paperback 352 pages (March 2003)
Publisher: Black Swan
ISBN: 0552999415