Question

A competing commercial effort to sequence the human genome was initiated by the company Celera in 1997. How was their approach different from the Human Genome Project?

• A. Libraries of individual chromosomes were generated and overlapping clones were isolated before sequencing.
• B. They used sequence tagged sites (STS) and expression sequence tags (EST) to order contigs prior to sequencing.
• C. They sequenced the entire genome from one female donor.
• D. They generated overlapping clones from YAC and BAC libraries that were identified by hybridization and organized into long contiguous stretches called contigs.
• E. They used a whole-genome shotgun sequencing method that eliminates the step of assembling a physical map of the genome.

Answer 1

Ans: E. They used a whole-genome shotgun sequencing method that eliminates the step of assembling a physical map of the genome.

The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international collaborative research programme by the 'International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium', as the Human Genome Project team was known, involved scientists from 20 institutions in six countries:  France, Germany, Japan, China, the UK and the USA. The HGP was started on October 1, 1990 and completed in April 2003. The primary goal of HGP was to discover the complete genome of human DNA. The 13 year project includes genetic mapping, physical mapping, DNA sequencing, gene identification, technology development and ethical, legal and social implications. In 1998, the entry of a private company Celera Genomics into the human genome sequencing arena leads a race to sequence the human genome. Craig Venter, an American researcher, (founder of the Institute for Genomic Research in Maryland, USA), launched a private company Celera Genomics. Craig Venter was a scientist at the NIH during the early 1990s when the HGP project was initiated. The Celera technique on human genome sequencing called whole genome shotgun (WGS) sequencing. They employed pair wise end sequencing, which had been used to sequence bacterial genomes of up to six million base pairs in length, but not for anything nearly as large as the three billion base pair human genome.