Human Genome Project. Who Built the Highway, The Government or Corporate America ?

The Human Genome Project (HGP)of NIH refers to the international 13-year effort, formally begun in October 1990 to discover all the estimated 20,000-25,000 human genes and make them accessible for further biological study. Basically, the NIH's plan was to start sequencing from the upper corner of chromosome 1 and sequence both arms of chromosome 1 in the planned time. After that chromosome 2 was the target. The rest of the chromosomes were going to be sequenced one by one.

However, Craig Venter realized the time constrain and the power of chip-computing. Backed up with millions of corporate money, super computers, Indian and Chinese computer nerds he did everything in parallel. Basically, he chewed the genomic DNA into millions of pieces and sequenced (read) these pieces in parallel. He then used that information to stitch these pieces to build up the DNA of a single individual. He first created a complete chaos, thrown all pieces of the puzzle on the carpet and then used computational power to build the final image and he was putting more pieces on the board at a time. NIH's approach was to put one piece at a time. Time was on Craig Venter's side. He finished the Job first in 2003.

Times are changing and it seems that Corporate America is more talented in following up the change.