Fruit fly genome success

Scientists have nearly finished sequencing the fruit fly genome, almost a year ahead of schedule. American firm Celera Genomics, along with the Berkley Drosophila Genome Project and The European Drosophila Project, will publish their joint results in the journal Science next month. The announcement boosts Celera's controversial claim that it will finish sequencing the human genome by the end of 2001.

The genome of the fruit fly, Drosophila, is made up of around 160 million DNA base pairs, making it the largest, most complex genome sequenced so far. The achievement will be invaluable to scientists working on human genes, since it turns out around 60 per cent of our genes have a fruit fly counterpart. Like the human genome, which is 3000 million base-pairs in size, the fly genome contains repeated DNA sequences - so-called junk DNA. Critics of Celera's 'shotgun' approach to sequencing, which uses computers to piece together random fragments of overlapping DNA sequence, feared the method would not cope with junk DNA.

But the gamble paid off: 'Working with Craig Venter and his colleagues at Celera has allowed us to complete the project 18 months earlier and probably saved the US tax payer $10 million' said Professor Gerald Rubin, head of the Berkley group.

However, some scientists remain sceptical of Celera's aim to sequence the human genome ahead of the publicly-funded Human Genome Project (HGP). 'You have to understand that the fly genome is 10 times smaller than the human genome, and also simpler' says Dr Peter Little of Imperial College, London. 'If I were a betting man, which I am, I would still put money on the publicly-funded HGP to produce the biologically-important information before Celera' he added.