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Celera Genomics, the Maryland-based company in the forefront of the race to
unravel the human genome, said last week that it had sequenced 95 per cent of
the mouse genome, from three strains. “The mouse genome is an invaluable tool to
interpret the human genome,” says Craig Venter, Celera’s president. A spokesman
for Britain’s Wellcome Trust says that its plan to spend £39 million with
the US National Institutes of Health sequencing the genome of a fourth mouse
strain does not put them in competition with Celera. “We are sequencing a
different strain of mouse. The two approaches are complementary,”…