On this page, we offer quick links to the human genome articles and commentary published in Science and Nature in February 2001. We also will highlight special issues or sections of other journals focused on the human genome as they become available.

Science has devoted its entire 16 February 2001 issue to the human genome -- the sequence as developed by Celera Genomics, a variety of associated data-mining and mapping papers, and a series of "Future Directions" commentary pieces that explore how the genome's publication affects, medicine, politics, science, and ethics. The entire issue is available free of charge to all users at the journal's Website, www.sciencemag.org.

Contents of the issue:

Editorial Overview

Senior Editor Barbara Jasny and Editor-In-Chief Donald Kennedy give a broad-brush view of the meaning of the genome event. A special edition of This Week In Science offers a capsule summary of the issue's contents, organized into five broad thematic categories.

Special News Section: The Human Genome

A dozen articles detailing the often controversial history of the human genome initiative, the future for genomics and for the massive genome research centers that the project has spawned, and some "unsung heros" in the genome race. Includes a timeline of genome history, an enhanced version of which can be found here on Science Functional Genomics.

Future Directions

The Human Genome and Our View of Ourselves, Svante Pääbo
Proteomics in Genomeland, Stanley Fields
Dissecting Human Disease in the Postgenomic Era, Leena Peltonen and Victor A. McKusick
Toward Behavioral Genomics, Peter McGuffin, Brien Riley, and Robert Plomin
Political Issues in the Genome Era, James M. Jeffords and Tom Daschle
Functional Annotation of Mouse Genome Sequences, The International Mouse Mutagenesis Consortium
What If There Are Only 30,000 Human Genes?, Jean-Michel Claverie
Making Sense of the Sequence, David J. Galas
Bioinformatics--Trying to Swim in a Sea of Data, David S. Roos

Book Reviews

A special section examining three very different works on the history of genetics and genomics.

Analysis of Genomic Information

Apoptotic Molecular Machinery: Vastly Increased Complexity in Vertebrates Revealed by Genome Comparisons, L. Aravind, Vishva M. Dixit, and Eugene V. Koonin
Human DNA Repair Genes, Richard D. Wood, Michael Mitchell, John Sgouros, and Tomas Lindahl
The Human Transcriptome Map: Clustering of Highly Expressed Genes in Chromosomal Domains, Huib Caron et al.
Birth of Two Chimeric Genes in the Hominidae Lineage, Anouk Courseaux and Jean-Louis Nahon
A High-Resolution Radiation Hybrid Map of the Human Genome Draft Sequence, Michael Olivier et al.

The Human Genome

The Sequence of the Human Genome, J. Craig Venter et al.
Annotation of the Celera Human Genome Assembly

Nature's issue of 15 February 2001, focusing on the draft sequence of the International Human Genome Project, is also freely available through a special node on the journal's Genome Gateway. Here are some highlights:

The Human Genome

Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome, The Genome International Sequencing Consortium

Analysis

Guide to the draft human genome, Tyra G. Wolfsberg, Johanna McEntyre, Gregory D. Schuler
Mining the draft human genome, Ewan Birney, Alex Bateman, Michele E. Clamp, Tim J. Hubbard
Expressing the human genome, Rossella Tupler, Giovanni Perini, Michael R. Green
Other analysis articles

News and Views

Our genome unveiled, David Baltimore
The draft sequences: Filling in the gaps, Peer Bork, Richard Copley
The draft sequences: Comparing species, Gerald M. Rubin
Other News and Views

The 7 February 2001 issue of JAMA, built around the theme of opportunities for medical research in the 21st century, included a number of interesting articles bearing on genetics and genomics:

Implications of the Human Genome Project for Medical Science, Francis S. Collins, Victor A. McKusick
Gene and Stem Cell Therapies, Eugene H. Kaji, Jeffrey M. Leiden
Genetic Information, Genomic Technologies, and the Future of Drug Discovery, Thomas F. Bumol, August M. Watanabe

On 22 February 2001, the New England Journal of Medicine published an editorial, Genome-Wide Views of Cancer, and an article, Gene-Expression Profiles in Hereditary Breast Cancer, both of which were directly relevant to the human sequence.