Human Genome rivals make up

In an unusual display of solidarity, the heads of the private and public projects aiming to decipher the entire human genome held an impromptu joint press briefing last week. Craig Venter, president of Celera Genomics and Dr Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, shook hands and complimented each other at a US National Institutes of Health (NIH) conference on cancer genetics.

Dr Collins said that the media had exaggerated the image of Celera and the HGP competing in a race. 'I hope you guys are tired of it because we sure are' he said. Earlier this year, an attempt at collaboration between the two sides fell apart in a disagreement over publishing and sharing data. But the two men played down any past differences. 'There's no reason for there to be wars' said Venter.

In the past, Dr Venter has accused the HGP of wasting taxpayers' money, while the HGP scientists have attacked Celera's insistence on exclusive rights to the processed data. But at the briefing, Collins praised Celera for making the raw data 'in which they have invested hundreds of millions of dollars' available to the academic community.

Dr Collins emphasised the urgent need for legislation to protect people against discrimination by health insurers and employers. 'We do not need hundreds to thousands of casualties before acting on this important issue' he said.

Meanwhile, IBM researchers in the US are building 'Blue Gene', a supercomputer 50 times bigger than anything currently in use. It will tackle the mysteries of protein folding - how a complex, functioning protein is built up from a chain of simpler molecules.