Dek barito ko marupokan titiak sejarah dalam ilmu pangatahuan, dan indak
ado kopiraiknyo, ambo tintiang sajo manyalinnyo kasadoalahe untuak kito
baco di Lapau dan kapantiangan umum basamo-samo.
Salam,
Mak Ngah
****************************************************************************
"The real contest now is not so much airplanes, trucks, roadways or ships,
but who has the best information and who knows how to use it" IBM
*****************************************************************************
June 26, 2000
Scientists Announce DNA Mapping
Filed at 6:17 p.m. EDT
By The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Proclaiming a ``historic
point in the
100,000-year record of humanity,'' scientists
announced that the
human genetic code essentially has been
deciphered, a monumental
achievement that opens a dramatic new frontier
in medicine.
Leaders of competing public and private efforts
said at a White House
ceremony Monday that they have virtually
completed assembly of
what they called ``the book of life'' --
nature's genetic instruction
manual for making and maintaining human beings.
Knowing the human genetic code, said President
Clinton, will give
science ``an immense new power to heal'' by
attacking disease ``at its
genetic roots.''
Because of the new genetic knowledge, said the
president, ``our
children may know cancer only as a constellation
of stars'' and not as
a disease that kills and maims.
Clinton also cautioned that the genetic map must
never be used to
segregate, discriminate or invade the privacy of
human beings.
Legislation is circulating in Congress that
offers such protection.
The president paid tribute to James D. Watson,
one of the scientific
pioneers who, he said, ``first discovered the
elegant structure of our
genetic code.'' Watson was one of many eminent
scientists at the
ceremony.
J. Craig Venter, chief scientist of Celera
Genomics, a Rockville, Md.,
company that completed the genome project in
just nine months using
powerful computers, said the work ``creates at
least the potential'' to
cure cancer and to find previously impossible
treatments for hundreds
of diseases that have plagued human for centuries.
``Today...marks an historic point in the
100,000-year record of
humanity,'' Venter told an East Room audience
that included
ambassadors, agency chiefs, scientists and,
participating from London
on a television hookup, British Prime Minister
Tony Blair.
Blair said mapping the genome ``has implications
far surpassing even
the discovery of antibiotics.'' He said the
achievement ``carries
humankind across a frontier and into a new era.''
``We have caught a glimpse of an instruction
book previously known
only to God,'' said Dr. Francis Collins,
director of the National Human
Genome Research Institute and leader of the
international, publicly
financed Human Genome Project.
The public effort has taken more than five years
and $300 million,
with the National Institutes of Health funding
about half. Six
countries were involved, with major portions of
the genome
sequenced by the Wellcome Trust's Sanger Centre
in Britain, the U.S.
Department of Energy, the Whitehead Institute in
Cambridge, Mass.;
Washington University at St. Louis and Baylor
College of Medicine in
Houston. Researchers in China, Germany, France
and Japan also
contributed.
Venter said his company sequenced and assembled
in the correct order
some 3.12 billion chemical base pairs that make
up the human
genome, an enormous undertaking that used one of
the most powerful
assemblages of computers in the world.
``We have sequenced the genomes of three females
and two males who
have identified themselves as Hispanic, Asian,
Caucasian or
African-American,'' said Venter. The variety was
selected, he said,
``out of respect for the diversity that is
America, and to help
illustrate that the concept of race has no
genetic or scientific basis.''
Shares of Celera rose as high as $135 on the
news Monday before a
round of profit-taking sent shares down to
finish at $112, off $13.25.
Collins said the effort supported by public
funds had completed a
``rough draft'' of the genome, which means that
more than 97 percent
of the chemical base pairs have been identified
and sequenced, and
about 85 percent has been placed in the correct
order in the
chromosomes. ``It is not all zipped up with
every letter identified,''
Collins told a news conference. ``That will take
another two years.''
Venter said the genome map produced by his
company also has gaps
that eventually will be filled.
The public and private efforts, the scientists
said, used different
methods. This has a scientific advantage, they
said, because the two
teams will now compare their results to help
ferret out any errors
and to fill in the missing gaps.
In the White House ceremony, a follow-up
briefing and at a joint news
conference later at a nearby hotel, Venter and
Collins repeatedly
complimented each other on overcoming a
competitive anger that
become a public fight. News organizations had
described the
competition as ``a race'' and had printed bitter
words from both men.
For a time, it looked as if there would be no
joint announcement and
that the public and private efforts would go
their separate ways.
Clinton got personally involved, instructing his
science adviser to get
the two men together, said Time magazine.
Last month Collins called Ari Petrinos, a
Department of Energy gene
scientist, and asked him to mediate.
Petrinos invited Collins and Venter to his house
for beer and pizza and
the two men eventually agreed on Monday's joint
announcement.
``This is such a historic occasion, we felt we
had to come together for
a joint announcement,'' Venter said.
Said Collins: ``The only race we're interested
in is the human race.''
Scientists from the two projects will meet late
this year to compare
their genome data sets, Collins and Venter said.
The goal of both teams is to identify and place
into proper order the
3.12 billion chemical base pairs present in
human DNA and to identify
within that DNA the estimated 50,000 human
genes. The base pairs
are made up of four types of nucleotides, called
adenine, thymine,
cytosine and guanine. They are abbreviated A, T,
C and G in the
scientific description of the genome.
It is the order and sequence of these bases
within the 23 pairs of
human chromosomes that make up the genetic code,
and deciphering
the billions of letters was a monumental challenge.
Collins said that if all the letters were
printed on 8 1/2 by 11 inch
paper, the sheets would stack up as high as the
Washington Monument,
555 feet.
------
On the Net: Human Genome Program:
http://www.ornl.gov/hgmis/project/progress.html
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