The order of the chemical units (bases) along a piece of DNA or RNA.
The US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has issued new guidelines on the patenting of genes, reports last week's Nature. Although the guidelines accept that genes can be patented, they are intended to prevent the patenting of gene sequences with no immediately apparent use. From now on, applications for gene...
The former director of the UK's Sanger Centre and a leading biotech entrepreneur have expressed their concern over the delay of a new £100 million 'genome campus' in Cambridgeshire. Sir John Sulston and Sir Christopher Evans, both knighted in the New Year's Honours List for their scientific efforts, have criticised...
Pharmaceutical giants Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham finally completed their £114 billion merger at the end of last year, becoming GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) on 27 December. The deal, which took 11 months to complete, means that GSK is now the world's largest drugs company and the third biggest corporation in the...
The UK's Sanger Centre, which has decoded a third of the human genetic code, will soon begin work on the zebrafish genome. The results of the project, which is to be funded by the Wellcome Trust, will be made freely available. Earlier this year, some scientists were concerned that the...
The UK government is finalising a deal that will allow NHS doctors to carry out tests on two patented genes involved in breast cancer, without paying royalty fees to British licence-holders Rosgen. Although the details of the deal have yet to be agreed, Rosgens say that in the interim, NHS...
Scientists in China and Denmark have formed a consortium to sequence the entire pig genome, reports last week's Science. The partners hope the project - the first of its kind to tackle livestock - will benefit pig-breeding industries in both countries. The information would also help xenotransplantation researchers - the potential use of...
The German government has approved a European Union (EU) directive on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions, a move seen as a significant step in the adoption of the directive across Europe. But a controversial clause concerning the patenting of human genes has lead many scientists and MPs to oppose...
A public-private consortium that includes the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the UK's Wellcome Trust has announced a £39m ($58) plan to sequence the entire mouse genome by February 2001. The genetic information of the mouse is seen as the 'Rosetta stone' that will enable researchers to determine...
The leaders of the Human Genome Project met in Paris last week to discuss strategies for finishing off the 'rough draft' of the human genome sequence completed in June, reports last week's Nature. Only 25 per cent of the DNA sequence that makes up the human genetic information is currently...
Three more US universities have signed up for access to Celera Genomic's gene databases, announced the US company last week. The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, the University of Cincinnati and Ohio State University join Harvard and Vanderbilt University as academic subscribers to Celera's version of the human genome...
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