BACK in 1984, Robert Sinsheimer had a problem. As chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz, he had raised $36 million towards the $70 million needed for a new , but a new donor had suddenly stepped in and provided the whole $70 million. An enviable problem, perhaps, but if Sinsheimer couldn鈥檛 persuade the existing donors to support another big science project, the university would have to return the $36 million.
While physicists and astronomers rarely hesitated to ask for huge sums, biologists had always thought small. But Sinsheimer, a molecular biologist, decided that it was time for that to change. He proposed creating an institute to sequence the human genome.
That plan never got off the ground, but it led to the first workshop to discuss sequencing the human genome, held in Santa Cruz in 1985. Most biologists did not embrace the idea, though. In fact, many ridiculed it. 鈥淚鈥檓 surprised consenting adults have been caught in public talking about it鈥� It makes no sense,鈥� one told New Scientist in 1987 (5 March, p 35).
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The reason was that biologists thought that most of our DNA is useless. Given that DNA sequencing was extremely slow and expensive at the time, many argued that sequencing the entire genome was a waste of money. They feared the project would take funding away from their existing studies.
Despite the objections, the idea gained momentum. First the US Department of Energy and then the National Institutes of 午夜福利1000集合 began considering the idea. The project officially got under way in the US in 1990. It soon expanded to become an international effort.
Ten years ago, at press conferences held around the globe on 26 June 2000, the world was told that the project was complete, or at least that there was a 鈥渨orking draft鈥�. The hard part 鈥� trying to make sense of it all 鈥� could now begin.
Read more: Unknown genome: What we still don鈥檛 know about our DNA
