Because scientists will not know where in the long chain of 3 billion base pairs the fragment might belong, the task of reassembling the fragments becomes far more difficult. This difficulty in reassembly inevitably will lead to gaps and misassemblies in the sequence. Some of these may occur in DNA regions with great biological significance. The private sector approach does not propose to fill in all the gaps left by these unsequenced fragments, thereby creating a product that will be incomplete for many research uses. The policy of daily release of DNA sequence data by publicly-funded efforts was arrived at because of the great interest in the scientific community in gaining access to this highly valuable information.
Any delay can result in wasted effort in research.
The industry approach to sequencing has not been tried on large and complex genomes, such as the human, and depends on newly developed and unproven machines. While quarterly data release is commendable, the plan is not as strong as the standards established by the international sequencing community which require release of data within 24 hours and discourage patenting. Now, Human Genome Project leaders at the NIH and DOE are considering that advice as they put the final touches on the new research plan, which will be published in the fall of 1998. The private and public genome sequencing efforts should not be seen as engaged in a race. In fact, scientists at TIGR and Perkin-Elmer have expressed their enthusiasm for a continued vigorous public effort on the HGP, and have conveyed their willingness to collaborate with NIH and DOE on the production of the complete human sequence.