Press Release

Department of Human Genetics
Eccles Institute of Human Genetics
University of Utah

RELEASE DATE: Nov. 2000

contact:
Connie Barth -- (801) 585-6135

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah -- Among the ten labs nationwide that received National Institutes of Health grants to participate in a new major genome sequencing project is the Utah Genome Research Center, whose unique approach to gene sequencing makes them a crucial component of the project.

"End sequencing," as the lab terms their technique, makes possible the assembly of large pieces of DNA sequence. Without it, the major sequencing centers that generate large segments of DNA sequence would be left with numerous puzzle pieces and no picture showing how to put them together in the correct order.

For this reason, the Utah Genome Center, headed by Dr. Bob Weiss, a geneticist in the University of Utah’s Department of Human Genetics, was chosen to participate in the Mouse Genome Sequencing Network, a new project announced last year by the NIH.

The NIH initiated the Mouse Network to supply scientists with badly-needed information to help them interpret the human genome data. "The Human Genome Project has possibly generated data that cannot be used by the average science researcher," comments Dr. Weiss.

Scientists are in such need of sequence data that they are using "rough drafts" of genome data, such as the human genome rough draft whose completion was announced last summer, rather than waiting for sequencing projects to produce final results. The sequence information to be generated by the Mouse Network is of significant value in several areas, including elucidating details about human genetic diseases, understanding evolutionary relationships among animals, and simply helping to make sense of the human genome.

The Utah Genome Center participated in the Human Genome Project research for several years and is a veteran in developing technology and sequencing strategies for large projects. However, the pace of genetic research has only quickened, and participation in the Mouse Network presents new challenges of speed, accuracy, and usability of data.

The new sequencing machines that the Genome Center is using for this project are much faster than what was available at the outset of the Human Genome Project 10 years ago, but that only allows deadlines to be set for shorter periods of time. The Mouse Network is schedule to produce a "rough draft" of the mouse genome, which is nearly the same size as the human genome, within 2 years. The final version is due in four.