The feasability of sequencing the human genome, Robert Sinsheimer

Interviewee: Robert Sinsheimer. Robert Sinsheimer talks about the feasability of sequencing the human genome.

In the Spring of 1985 I convened a workshop with the help of some of the Faculty at Santa Cruz, we got together all the leading people in sequencing and in informatics _ because you were going to have to have computer skills to handle all this data at that time _ at the same time, to ask would it be feasible to sequence the human genome. And we had the leading people. We had Lee Hood and John Sulston and Mike Waterston and Dave Botstein and Wally Gilbert and a number of other people. And we met for three days to discuss this question and I have to say when we started out I think most of the people were pretty skeptical, if not downright dubious. But at least they were all willing to come and talk about it. But after we did talk about it and we thought about what might be done to improve the technology to make this possible, to think in terms of automating a lot of the processes and in terms of multi-channeled sequencing and so on (all of which was not available but seemed like it could be made available) the project began to seem much more feasible. At least in the minds of some of us.

human genome project,john sulston,sinsheimer,feasability,botstein,waterston,genome sequencing,interviewee,computer skills,informatics,wally,santa cruz

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