Near Cambridge, for example, is the Sanger Centre which forms the heart of Britain's contribution to the international Human Genome Project. It is funded by the Wellcome Trust to sequence fully one-third of the 3 billion DNA bases making up the genome. The complex is home to about 570 staff, including technical assistants and scientists specialising in bioinformatics, which brings together biologists, mathematicians, computer scientists and even experts in artificial intelligence. At the Sanger, sections of a genome are taken and their DNA bases read off. Then each section has to be placed in the correct order to reconstruct larger sequences.
Groups focus on single chromosomes or regions of DNA of special medical interest.
Once a stretch of raw sequence is known, groups then search for patterns and decide if those sequences are genes or junk. And if humans aren't your bag, there are groups sequencing pathogens, including the malaria parasite, and animals such as the mouse and pufferfish. Cooperation, the key Teamworking is important. But the boundaries between groups stay fluid, giving staff a high degree of mobility. So, they can move between the wet lab, in which they would be dealing with DNA, and the more computer-based aspects of bioinformatics.