Public Sphere And The Sustainability Of The Bioinformatics Promise

The literature about genomics and bioinformatics achievements in high-impact journals such as Nature and Science has raised disproportionate expectations amongst the general public about fast and revolutionary drugs and breakthroughs in biomedicine. However, the yield obtained by database mining activities has been modest, as reported in the February 2001 issues of these journals featuring the completion of human genome draft sequences by the Human Genome Project Consortium and the company Celera. I have compared changes in rethoric employed by molecular biologists in 2001 and in April 2003, when the final sequence was announced. The comparison suggests that researchers are concerned about the sustainability of society's investment in this field, though not explicitly. © FUNPEC-RP.34575581Baltimore, D., Our genome unveiled (2001) Nature, 409, pp. 814-816Birney, E., Bateman, A., Clamp, M.E., Hubbard, T.J., Mining the draft human genome (2001) Nature, 409, pp. 827-828Bork, P., Copley, R., Filling in the gaps (2001) Nature, 409, pp. 818-820Butler, D., Are you ready for the revolution? (2001) Nature, 409, pp. 758-760Collins, F., Green, E.D., Guttmacher, A.E., Guyer, M.S., A vision for the future of genomics research. A blueprint for the genomic era (2003) Nature, 422, pp. 835-847Collins, F., Morgan, M., Patrinos, A., The Human Genome Project: Lessons from large-scale biology (2003) Science, 300, pp. 286-296Frazier, M.E., Johnson, G.M., Thomassen, D.G., Oliver, C.E., Patrinos, A., Realizing the potential of the genome revolution (2003) Science, 300, pp. 290-293. , The Genomes to Life ProgramGalas, D.J., Making sense of the sequence (2001) Science, 291, pp. 1257-1260Lander, E.S., Linton, L.M., Birren, B., Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome (2001) Nature, 409, pp. 860-921Malakoff, D., Service, R.F., Genomania meets the bottom line (2001) Science, 291, pp. 1193-1203Pollard, T.D., Genomics, the cytoskeleton and motility (2001) Nature, 409, pp. 842-843Tupler, R., Perini, G., Green, M., Expressing the human genome (2001) Nature, 409, pp. 832-833Venter, J., Remington, K., Heidelberg, J.F., Environmental genome shotgun sequencing of the Sargasso Sea (2004) Science, 304, pp. 66-7