A big problem for the human genome bubble is to make very simple assumption about the cause of disease and genetic structure of complex diseases. Several high profile journals such as nature, science often like to publish many papers with large samples and high costs, but with little intellectual stimulus. I am afraid that this will mislead biomedical research.

I agree on your point. And these papers are about the results based on oversimplified hypothesis about human disease, e.g, the epigenetic factors, the bridge between genotype and environment, are still overlooked too much! So you are right, the current researches in the field is misleading indeed!

The real Genome project was the result of, not the cause of technology development. The sequencing instruments that enabled the effort were not, in fact, developed for the effort directly and certainly not supported by government initiatives. Beyond process optimization, there was only limited technology development coming from the groups involved in the actual project that had much subsequent impact. The recent spate of technology innovation in genomics was very much a post-genome Project phenomenon.

I can't help but conclude that the massive investment of governments into sequencing the human genome was actually a great hindrance to the biotech industry, which has not really recovered since the draft human genome sequence was first reported. An enormous amount of private capital was pumped into biotech companies like Celera, whose values were pretty much wiped out with the release of the DNA sequence data. As a consequence, private investors have been reluctant ever since to invest in companies that might translate this information into better diagnostic tools and therapeutics.

It's been about a decade since we learned about the primary structures of most of the human proteins. Yet there continues to be wide government support for sequencing the genomes of more and more species and more members within species, but relatively little demonstrated support from the same agencies for better understanding of the proteins encoded by the human genome and the genomes other organisms that have already been sequenced.

It has been argued that the huge investment into genome-specific research activities has dramatically reduced the costs of genome sequencing so that $1000 genome-wide analyses are not too far away. However, there are so many genomes, sequenced at costs of hundreds of millions of dollars, which have already overwhelmed the capacity of researchers with the present support to make sense of this tide wave of data.

At Kinexus, we have been trying to track the extent of post-translational modification of proteins, which is necessary to confer full functionality to proteins. In our PhosphoNET database (www.phosphoNET.ca) we have documented about 75,000 phosphorylation sites, but we believe the actual number is closer to 500,000. We have found that evolutionary analysis of the genomes of diverse organisms can yield insights into which phosphorylation sites might be particularly important based on their conservation. The available genomic data is sufficient for this purpose. It is frustrating that only a few laboratories world-wide have been provided the resources to conduct limited studies of protein phosphorylation by tandem mass spectrometry, when this is the next logical step after identifying all of the human proteins. It makes a lot more sense to divert more funding into basic research that builds on the fruits of our genomics investment rather than propagate even more of the same kind of data. Only in this way can truly practical benefits from the genomics investment come to pass.

The idea that goverments should crate bubbles to harness the privet sector for long term investments is immoral. Consider those investors who used their pension funds to invest in companies who have bubble-based business models: when the company defaults, because they do not have the funds to benefit from their "long term investment", those people will be left without a pension. So is goverments will create bubbles on purpose, it's not only corporate money that gets invested. While the corporate world will be there to benefit when the long term investment bears fruits, privet investors (through stock or otherwise) will not.

I think that presenting false expectations should not be considered a legitimate way to fund otherwise worthy causes.
ER

Genes aren't everything. At HUNT (www.huntbiosciences.com) we have collected biologal samples and a huge set of phenotype data on more than 120 000 Norwegians. Using both genotype and phenotype information may help us is search of causes of complex, life style related diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.