FORGET the Olympics. This summer’s most exciting competition has nothing to
do with sport. We’re in the home straight of one of the most important contests
of all time: the race to sequence the human genome.
It’s not a big field—just two serious contenders. In one lane, you’ll
find the Human Genome Project, a consortium of labs funded mainly by the US
government and the Wellcome Trust, the world’s largest medical research charity.
Its rival is Celera Genomics in Maryland, headed by Craig Venter, biotech’s
answer to Bill Gates. The two are neck and neck, and going flat out…
