ADDRESSING the world from the White House, Bill Clinton called it 鈥渢he most important, most wondrous map ever produced by humankind鈥�. Others reached for the clich茅s: book of life, code of codes. Now, nearly two years on, it appears that the human genome鈥攐r at least one of the two competing versions鈥攊s largely a map (or book, or code鈥�) of just one middle-aged, balding male.
Yes, after much whispered speculation, Craig Venter, the scientist who led the private-sector effort that so controversially tried to beat the public team to the finishing line, has finally come clean. The genome decoded by his then company Celera was largely his own. Unbeknown even to many of his colleagues, it seems Venter quietly arranged things so that Celera鈥檚 book of life would be mostly the book of Venter鈥檚 life. Of the five DNA samples selected for sequencing, it was his that came to dominate the final genome.
Does this matter? A couple of genome luminaries have already gone on the record to say they are neither surprised nor upset, and it is easy to see why. Venter has never been a bashful plodder in a lab coat. One person鈥檚 genome is much the same as another鈥檚. And there is nothing wrong in principle with scientists donating samples and volunteering to be guinea pigs, so why shouldn鈥檛 Venter sequence his own DNA?
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In fact, the disclosure is potentially very damaging. 杏吧原创s in both teams, not to mention the Clintons and Blairs of this world, encouraged us all to see the genome as universal, something that applied to all humanity. The DNA, we were repeatedly told, came from pools of anonymous donors, randomly selected everymen and everywomen from a range of ethnic backgrounds whose exact identity was unimportant.
This perception is now in pieces. The Celera genome has already revealed to Venter that he carries a faulty fat metabolism gene. He has even begun taking a drug to counteract its effects. The universal blueprint has become a deeply personal one. Venter is honest enough to admit he was motivated mainly by sheer curiosity, and that would have been fine if he had been open from the start about whose DNA was in the machines. As it is, many will now believe they have been misled. Others will be wondering exactly how such a high-profile company could have let a supposedly random selection process be overridden in this way.
The news should be especially unsettling for the scientists in Britain who are setting up the pioneering BioBank UK. Very soon they expect to get the go-ahead to collect DNA and lifestyle information from some 500,000 middle-aged volunteers, and are anxious to reassure everyone that the samples and information will be used only for bona fide medical research and will remain anonymous. It will hardly help their cause that the book of life has suddenly been linked to a name, a face and a medical history when it too was supposed to be anonymous.