The Gene: An Intimate History - Siddhartha Mukherjee Page 0,147

be involved with a disease, 177 genes—more than 60 percent—had a related counterpart in the fly. There were no genes for sickle-cell anemia or hemophilia—flies do not have red blood cells or form clots—but genes involved in colon cancer, breast cancer, Tay-Sachs disease, muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and diabetes, or close counterparts of those genes, were present. Although separated by four legs, two wings, and several million years of evolution, flies and humans shared core pathways and genetic networks. As William Blake had suggested in 1794, the diminutive fly had turned out to be “a man like me.”

The most bewildering feature of the fly genome was also a matter of size. Or more accurately, it was the proverbial revelation that size does not matter. Contrary to the expectations of even the most seasoned fly biologists, the fly was found to have just 13,601 genes—5,000 fewer genes than a worm. Less had been used to build more: out of just 13,000 genes was created an organism that mates, grows old, gets drunk, gives birth, experiences pain, has smell, sight, taste, and touch, and shares our insatiable desire for ripe summer fruit. “The lesson is that the complexity apparent [in flies] is not achieved by the sheer number of genes,” Rubin said. “The human genome . . . is likely to be an amplified version of a fly genome. . . . The evolution of additional complex attributes is essentially an organizational one: a matter of novel interactions that derive from the temporal and spatial segregation of fairly similar components.”

As Richard Dawkins puts it, “All animals probably have a relatively similar repertoire of proteins that need to be ‘called forth’ at any particular time. . . .” The difference between a more complex organism and a simpler one, “between a human and a nematode worm, is not that humans have more of those fundamental pieces of apparatus, but that they can call them into action in more complicated sequences and in a more complicated range of spaces.” It was not the size of the ship, yet again, but the way the planks were configured. The fly genome was its own Delphic boat.

In May 2000, with Celera and the Human Genome Project sprinting neck and neck toward a draft sequence of the human genome, Venter received a phone call from his friend Ari Patrinos, from the Department of Energy. Patrinos had contacted Francis Collins and asked him to stop by Patrinos’s town house for an evening drink. Would Venter consider joining? There would be no aides, advisers, or journalists, no entourage of investors or funders. The conversation would be entirely private, and the conclusions would remain strictly confidential.

Patrinos’s phone call to Venter had been orchestrated for several weeks. News of the arms race between Celera and the Human Genome Project had filtered through political channels and reached the White House. President Clinton, with his unfailing nose for public relations, realized that news of the contest could escalate into an embarrassment for the government, especially if Celera was the first to announce victory. Clinton had sent his aides a note with a terse, two-word dictum—“Fix this!”—appended to the margin. Patrinos was the appointed “fixer.”

A week later, Venter and Collins met in the rec room in the basement of Patrinos’s town house in Georgetown. The atmosphere was understandably chilly. Patrinos waited for the mood to thaw, then delicately broached the subject of the meeting: Would Collins and Venter consider a joint announcement of the sequencing of the human genome?

Both Venter and Collins had come mentally prepared for such an offer. Collins had already agreed to a “joint revelation” (in part, he had instigated the meeting with Venter, using Patrinos as an intermediary). Venter mulled over the possibility and acquiesced—but with several caveats. He agreed to a joint ceremony at the White House to celebrate the draft sequence, and back to back publications in Science. He made no commitments about timelines. This, as one journalist would later describe it, was the most “carefully scripted draw.”

That initial meeting in Ari Patrinos’s basement room became the first of several private meetings between Venter, Collins, and Patrinos. Over the next three weeks, Collins and Venter warily choreographed the general outline of the announcement: President Clinton would open the event, followed by Tony Blair, and by talks from Collins and Venter. In effect, Celera and the Human Genome Project would be declared joint victors in the race to sequence the human genome. The White House was