How diplomacy helped to end the race to sequence the human genome

How diplomacy helped to end the race to sequence the human genome

How diplomacy helped to end the race to sequence the human genome

Twenty years ago, the race to sequence the human genome ended in a tie — thanks to some deft statecraft from the White House. At the announcement, bitter scientific rivals Francis Collins, then-director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute, and Craig Venter, founder of Celera Genomics, a company formed to commercialize genome data, stood shoulder-to-shoulder to share the glory. “Looking back… the fact that world leaders played a part in efforts to tie the race to sequence the human genome is striking,” says a Nature editorial. “It also serves as an unhappy reminder that, although biology has continued to progress, standards of statesmanship have fallen to previously unimaginable depths.”

Nature | 5 min read