Celera Genomics, the Maryland-based company that was in the forefront of the race to sequence the human genome, has announced that it has sequenced 95 per cent of the genome of the mouse.
Celera technicians claim they have sequenced 9.3 billion base pairs of DNA from three different strains of mice.
鈥淭he mouse genome is an invaluable tool to interpret the human genome and to use in biomedical research using mice as animal models,鈥� says Craig Venter, Celera鈥檚 president.
Advertisement
The announcement comes just a week after Britain鈥檚 Wellcome Trust and the US National Institutes of 午夜福利1000集合 revealed plans to spend 拢39 million sequencing the genome of a fourth strain of mouse.
Teams sponsored by the Wellcome Trust and the NIH competed with Celera in the race to sequence the human genome. But a Wellcome Trust spokeswoman denies the groups are in competition over mouse DNA.
鈥淲e are sequencing a different strain of mouse. The two approaches are complementary,鈥� she says.
Data produced by the Mouse Sequencing Consortium will be publicly available, unlike Celera鈥檚. Celera has said it will use any gene information the consortium produces in its own databases, which subscribers have to pay to access.
Humans and mice share around 85 per cent of their genes. Scientists conducting drugs trials on mice will one day be able to use the mouse and human genomes to predict the effects on a human of a drug tested on a mouse and to better understand genetic contributions to disease.
But it will still be many years before scientists know exactly the function of all the genes in mice and humans.