And even when it is, this scientific achievement will be largely a distraction as far as the business community is concerned. A large segment of the pharmaceutical industry has had almost all human genes to work with for about the past five years, through collaborations with my company and others that have made headway in identifying genes. We found them by means of a technique that isolates the active genes without requiring us to know the genome sequence. Successful programs to develop drugs based on genes isolated this way are well in hand. Products are being tested in patients.
Progress is encouraging, especially compared with the record of genome sequencing.
What is more, genes exist in genomic sequence in a fragmented state that makes it impossible to recognize those not already identified by other means. We know this, because several potentially medically important human genes that reside in a part of the genome that has now been sequenced were completely missed by the sequencing team. They admitted they could not find novel genes in the genome sequence. Sequencing the genome has been likened to a biological moonshot. It may be a scientific tour de force, but the near-term practical benefits are few.