Media Clips - EMBL

Reading Between the Genes
While Greally said the study is an important milestone in understanding the human genome,
the fact that the other parts of the DNA play a regulatory role is not surprising; rather, it is
something many scientists had expected.
He also said that this study begins to answer a question scientists have been asking for a
while: How do cells in the body operate differently when they all have the exact same DNA?
"What we've known for a long time ... is that every cell in the body has the same DNA, but
every cell uses different genes, and that's what defined them," said Greally.
While the current study mapped 1 percent of the genome and took four years, scientists feel
that the remaining 99 percent of the genome's regulatory regions will be mapped within the
next four to five years.
"It's just a matter of money," said Zhiping Weng, a biomedical engineering professor at Boston
University, who was one of the study leaders.
She said the accelerating pace of technology for sequencing DNA, and the number of labs that
will be interested in adding to the research, would speed up the remainder of the process.
"This is an enormous step forward," said Charles DeLisi, director of bioinformatics at Boston
University, who played a major role in the Human Genome Project, but was not involved in the
research for this particular study.
DeLisi sees this paper as the start of a new direction in the study of the human genome, where
we gain a broader understanding of how DNA really dictates human physiology.
"You'll learn a lot well before this project is completed," he said, referring to what he termed a
continuum of medical advances that would take place as researchers learned more about how
genetic defects contribute to various diseases like diabetes, heart disease and certain forms of
cancer.
Clinicians would then have a more accurate way of diagnosing patients for their risk of
developing specific diseases, DeLisi said.
Working in Harmony
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One of the most important parts of this study, DeLisi said, is the fact that many research labs
came together to work on it.
"We're all working together to make this happen a lot more rapidly than it would otherwise
happen," he said. "To me, that is exhilarating."
Francis Collins, head of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and Michael Snyder
of Yale University, echoed that sentiment at a press conference on the study Wednesday
morning. They indicated that having so many researchers working together so smoothly was
key to completing this important work.
This level of collaboration will continue as scientists aim to complete the mapping of the human
genome.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/print?id=3275245
6/18/2007