Description
THE SEQUENCE is the definitive account of what has been described as the single most important scientific breakthrough of modern times the elucidation of mankinds complete genetic script. It is a story in which science, politics, business and society meet head on.
At its heart is the race between the $3 billion Human Genome Project led by the brilliant geneticist Francis Collins, and a renegade biotech company founded by the scientist-entrepreneur J. Craig Venter. When the Human Genome Project, a 15-year joint project between the US and UK governments, was launched in 1990, it was inconceivable that anyone else would have the technology, the expertise or the financial resources to even enter the race, much less win it. In 1998 Venter announced that his company Celera would use high-powered sequencing machines to complete the sequence from scratch in three years.
This riveting book takes the reader into the labs and lives of these and other researchers who in late 2000 completed the first draft of the human genome. Regardless of who won the race, the stakes involved in this remarkable work are staggeringly high. From fertility clinics, where embryos are screened for disease genes before implantation, to the courtroom, where the rights to patent and use genetic information will be fought, THE SEQUENCE explores the profound implications of a discovery that will revolutionise our lives.
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