After the (draft) sequence

We now have the two reports on the human genome sequence, one, in Nature by the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium (GC), the other, in Science by Celera Genomics (CG). Each is accompanied by a flurry of secondary papers analyzing different aspects of the sequence, and these will no doubt be followed in the future by more analyses as, at least, the public sequence is available with no restrictions whatsoever to those who wish to examine it. The amount of information is enormous and all we have here is the surface. I have spent some time on both papers but the material will require much deeper reading in months to come.

I will begin by saying something about the two approaches used. GC based their approach on sequencing ordered, large-insert bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) libraries which had previously been shown to produce data with 99.99% accuracy and no gaps. It ...