Revisiting the independence of the publicly and privately funded drafts of the human genome

The field of human genetics had a landmark year in 2001. Two groups published a draft sequence of the human genome at the same time (1, 2). One paper was from the International Human Genome Project (HGP) (1), a public group that provided open access to their sequence as it was obtained. The other paper was authored by a private group, Celera Genomics (2), who do not provide immediate or free access to their sequence data. Accordingly, Celera used both the publicly available data and their independently generated data in compiling their draft of the human genome. The public group used a conservative, divide-and-conquer strategy in which segments of the genome were first cloned into bacteria to yield bacteria artificial chromosomes (BACs). These BACs were mapped and then sequenced. The private group used a bolder, whole-genome shotgun …