Interviewee: James Watson.
Nobel Laureate James Watson talks about the excitement and fear evident in early discussions about the Human Genome Project.
(DNAi Location: Genome > The project > Players > Money > Money was on everyone's mind)
Transcript:
People were very excited because it was, you know, we now knew how, both to sequence DNA and we knew how in principle to find the locations of the genes along chromosomes. And what you needed was a combination of clever ideas and a lot of money. Money was clearly in everyone's mind, were you going to be able to afford it. At that time to work out a letter was ten dollars a base pair, so it was a thirty billion dollar project, and that began to look gigantic, that was much more than, you know, our medical research budget for three or four years. And so no one who was currently being supported by the Government wanted to lose their money for the Human Genome Project.
Keywords:
nobel laureate james watson,human genome project,sequence dna,research budget,dnai,clever ideas,dollar project,base pair,money money,government funding,interviewee,chromosomes,medical research,genes,excitement,principle
Eric Lander, director of the Whitehead Institute Center for Genome Research, talks about his views on a competing genome project and its effect on funding.
James Watson describes sequencing the human genome using markers and BACs, and Craig Venter explains using cDNA libraries, ESTs, and shotgun sequencing.
The Maize Genome Project is the culmination of a century of maize research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory that began with George Shull and continued with Nobel Laureate Barbara McClintock.
James Watson and Francis Crick solved the structure of DNA. Other scientists, like Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins, also contributed to this discovery.