LONDON Although both Celera and the publicly funded Mouse Sequencing Consortium have recently announced draft sequences of the mouse genome, there is still a lot of work to do before a credible mouse genome is established.

On 27 April Celera stated that its whole genome shotgun process had provided the company with a 6X coverage of the mouse genome, derived from three strains of mouse (129X1/SvJ, DBA/2J and A/J). Celera claims that its sequence covers more than 99% of the genome, with 95% in segments of at least 100,000 base pairs and 80% in segments of at lease one million base pairs.

A solid achievement? Maybe not. Jane Rogers, head of the mouse genome sequencing effort at the Sanger Centre in Cambridge was quick to question this announcement. "There is an issue with this. With what Celera have got, how do they know that they have the correct assembly?" Her...

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