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OCKVILLE, Md.--Craig Venter grabbed news headlines last week when he held a press conference here to announce that his company, Celera Genomics, has sequenced 90 percent of human DNA, an amount that the company estimated covers 97 percent of all human genes. Since it began work on the human genome in early September, Celera has sequenced more than 5 billion base pairs of the human genome, including 2.58 billion base pairs of unique sequence. For the next several months, the company expects to add 2 billion base pairs per month. The data will ultimately be available by subscription to academic and commercial institutions, the company said. The New York Times reported that Celera’s pharmaceutical company subscribers pay $50 million per year for database access.
