Anticipating trouble

Science magazine today reports another ego trip.

A U.S. company [454] has begun to trickle out information on a unique DNA study it calls “Project Jim,” a crash effort to sequence the entire genome of a single individual. The results are likely to be made public this summer. Anonymity is out of the question: It has already been announced that the genome belongs to James D. Watson, winner of the Nobel Prize and co-discoverer of DNA’s structure. Watson won’t be alone: Harvard Medical School has approved a plan by computational geneticist George Church to sequence and make public the genomes of well-informed volunteers—including his own. And J. Craig Venter says his nonprofit institute will soon release a complete version of his genome.

My daily newsletter says that Roche is going to acquire 454 for $155M and plans to use the sequencer for IVD applications, I hope they will forget “Project Jim” somewhere on a harddisk.