The Gene: An Intimate History - Siddhartha Mukherjee Page 0,255

and Additions and a Memoir of the Author, vol. 1 (New York: Derby, 1859), 247–48.

More and more, the Human Genome Project: Justin Gillis, “Gene-mapping controversy escalates; Rockville firm says government officials seek to undercut its effort,” Washington Post, March 7, 2000.

Craig Venter, proposed a shortcut: L. Roberts, “Gambling on a Shortcut to Genome Sequencing,” Science 252, no. 5013 (1991): 1618–19.

In 1986, he had heard of: Lisa Yount, A to Z of Biologists (New York: Facts On File, 2003), 312.

“my future in a crate”: J. Craig Venter, A Life Decoded: My Genome, My Life (New York: Viking, 2007), 97.

the NIH technology transfer office contacted: R. Cook-Deegan and C. Heaney, “Patents in genomics and human genetics,” Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 11 (2010): 383–425, doi:10.1146/annurev-genom-082509-141811.

In 1984, Amgen had filed a patent: Edmund L. Andrews, “Patents; Unaddressed Question in Amgen Case,” New York Times, March 9, 1991.

“Patents (or so I had believed) are designed”: Sulston and Ferry, Common Thread, 87.

“It’s a quick and dirty land grab”: Pamela R. Winnick, A Jealous God: Science’s Crusade against Religion (Nashville, TN: Nelson Current, 2005), 225.

“Could you patent an elephant”: Eric Lander, author interview, 2015.

Walter Bodmer, the English geneticist, warned: L. Roberts, “Genome Patent Fight Erupts,” Science 254, no. 5029 (1991): 184–86.

The Institute for Genomic Research: Venter, Life Decoded, 153.

Working with a new ally, Hamilton Smith: Hamilton O. Smith et al., “Frequency and distribution of DNA uptake signal sequences in the Haemophilus influenzae Rd genome,” Science 269, no. 5223 (1995): 538–40.

“The final [paper] took forty drafts”: Venter, Life Decoded, 212.

“thrilled by the first glimpse”: Ibid., 219.

“What if you took a word”: Eric Lander, author interview, October 2015.

“The real challenge of the Human Genome Project”: Ibid.

TIGR had been set up: HGS was launched by William Haseltine, a former Harvard professor, who hoped to use genomics to discover novel drugs.

On May 12, 1998, the Washington Post: Justin Gills and Rick Weiss, “Private firm aims to beat government to gene map,” Washington Post, May 12, 1998, washingtonpost/archive/politics/1998/05/12/private-firm-aims-to-beat-government-to-gene-map/bfd5a322-781e-4b71-b939-5e7e6a8ebbdb/.

In December 1998: “1998: Genome of roundworm C. elegans sequenced,” Genome.gov, genome.gov/25520394.

A gene called ceh-13, for instance: Borbála Tihanyi et al., “The C. elegans Hox gene ceh-13 regulates cell migration and fusion in a non-colinear way. Implications for the early evolution of Hox clusters,” BMC Developmental Biology 10, no. 78 (2010), doi:10.1186/1471-213X-10-78.

The C. elegans genome—published to universal: Science 282, no. 5396 (1998): 1945–2140.

its one-billionth human base pair: David Dickson and Colin Macilwain, “ ‘It’s a G’: The one-billionth nucleotide,” Nature 402, no. 6760 (1999): 331.

it had sequenced the genome of the fruit fly: Declan Butler, “Venter’s Drosophila ‘success’ set to boost human genome efforts,” Nature 401, no. 6755 (1999): 729–30.

In March 2000, Science published: “The Drosophila genome,” Science 287, no. 5461 (2000): 2105–364.

Of the 289 human genes known to be: David N. Cooper, Human Gene Evolution (Oxford: BIOS Scientific Publishers, 1999), 21.

177 genes: William K. Purves, Life: The Science of Biology (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 2001), 262.

“a man like me”: Marsh, William Blake, 56.

“The lesson is that the complexity”: Quote from the director of the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project, Gerry Rubin, in Robert Sanders, “UC Berkeley collaboration with Celera Genomics concludes with publication of nearly complete sequence of the genome of the fruit fly,” press release, UC Berkeley, March 24, 2000, berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2000/03/03-24-2000.html.

“between a human and a nematode worm”: The Age of the Genome, BBC Radio 4, bbc/programmes/b00ss2rk.

“Fix this!”: James Shreeve, The Genome War: How Craig Venter Tried to Capture the Code of Life and Save the World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 350.

That initial meeting in Ari Patrinos’s basement: For details of this story see ibid. Also see Venter, Life Decoded, 97.

At 10:19 a.m. on the morning of June 26: “June 2000 White House Event,” Genome.gov, genome.gov/10001356.

Clinton spoke first, comparing the map: “President Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair deliver remarks on human genome milestone,” CNN Transcripts, June 26, 2000.

“My greatest success”: Shreeve, Genome War, 360.

Lander recruited yet another team of scientists: McElheny, Drawing the Map of Life, 163.

“In the history of scientific writing since the 1600s”: Eric Lander, author interview, October 2015.

“genome tossed salad”: Shreeve, Genome War, 364.

The Book of Man (in Twenty-Three Volumes)

It encodes about 20,687 genes in total: Details of the Human Genome Project come from “Human genome far more active than thought,” Wellcome Trust, Sanger Institute, September 5, 2012, sanger.ac/about/press/2012/120905.html; Venter, Life Decoded; and Committee on Mapping and Sequencing the Human Genome, Mapping and Sequencing the Human Genome (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1988), nap.edu/read/1097/chapter/1.

PART FIVE: THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

How nice it would be: Lewis Carroll, Alice in