Celera Genomics, the private US Company who participated in the sequencing of the human genome, has been accused of cheating by three of the scientists who participated in the publicly-funded rival project. They say that Celera used data from the public project and so has not actually published its own independent sequence as claimed.
The two teams announced last year that they had independently decoded the human genome, using different sequencing techniques. However, the accusation by Sir John Sulston, Robert Waterston and Eric Lander is now being supported by an investigation published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
An independent assessment was made of Celera's research by Sir Aaron Klug, a former president of the Royal Society. He has agreed that not all Celera's work was independent. Although he did not use the word 'cheating', he did say 'I would say that they didn't come clean as to what they had done'.
Celera is said to be writing a formal response denying the allegations, which it intends will be published in the same journal.
Sources and References
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American firm 'cheated' in race to map genome
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