HINXTON, UK--While bioinformaticists fret about a flood of genomic data, the news media is busy deciphering a flood of press releases from genomic sequencers. This month the Human Genome Project announced that it is six weeks away from being 85 percent done the human genome sequence.
The Sanger Centre said it will soon move from generating a working draft of human DNA into the final phase of producing the finished sequence. Total cost for phase one of the international effort was approximately $300 million. Roughly half was funded by the US National Institutes of Health.
Human Genome Project scientists also announced that chromosome 21 has been sequenced. The work, led by Japanese and German researchers, was published in Nature's May 18 issue.
The Sanger Centre might turn its attention to sequencing the 1.8-million-base-pair zebrafish genome once it is done its share of work on the human genome in October, according to a report in Science.