The rat will be the next target of publicly funded gene sequencing efforts in the United States, Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), told his advisory council this week.
Until recently, no researcher would have considered taking on the burden of another mammal's genome while jammed sequencing centers worked through the human and mouse. But high-throughput labs in Massachusetts, Texas, Missouri, and California have added machines and increased their capacity some 10-fold, says Robert Waterston, director of the center at Washington University in St. Louis. Now their output, plus that of Britain's Sanger Centre, is "enough to do a working draft of a mammalian genome in 4 to 5 months," Waterston told the council. As a result, the NHGRI-funded centers want to sequence the rat, mouse, and human genomes in parallel--if NHGRI and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute can carve out funds from the still undecided 2001 budget.
