DNA Pioneer Sees Fruits of Labor as Human Genome Is Decoded

DNA Pioneer Beholds Fruits of His Labor

Scientists present Watson with details of human genome

Justin Gillis / Washington Post 13feb01

Washington -- History came full circle yesterday on a stage here: James D. Watson, one of two scientists who unraveled the basic structure of DNA nearly half a century ago, beamed as his scientific descendants handed him a journal reporting details of the entire human genetic map.

Watson was honored as scientists announced the first exhaustive analyses of the human genome, the long strand of DNA that encodes the biology of the species. The first report, from the international Human Genome Project, is being published Thursday in the journal Nature, the publication in which Watson's DNA paper appeared in 1953. A second report, a privately funded effort from Celera Genomics Corp. of suburban Rockville, Md., is due the next day in the journal Science.

Details of both papers were released over the weekend and described at a news conference in Washington yesterday. Among many surprises, scientists said they were particularly struck by how few genes it takes to make a human being. They are still hunting down genes interspersed with long stretches of mostly useless DNA, but the current estimate is that people have only about 30,000 genes, down from an estimate a few years ago of as many as 140,000.

"There's a lesson in humility in this," said Eric Lander, head of genome research at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass. , and a leader in the Human Genome Project. "We have only twice as many genes as a fruit fly or a lowly nematode worm. What a comedown."

As several scientists noted, the finding actually makes their work more complicated, because they need to figure out how the tremendous complexity of the human body arises from so few genes.

Scientists from Celera reported that their major findings are consistent with those of the publicly funded Human Genome Project. Amid continuing debate over the best method of creating complex genome maps, the two groups said they would convene a scientific conference in April to share data and try to reach a consensus on the ideal technique.

As they revealed key details of the gene maps, scientists took pains to honor Watson as well as Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., the leading proponent in Congress of the Human Genome Project. Celera President J. Craig Venter presented a giant diagram of the genome to Domenici.

Scientists are excited about the gene map because of its potential for helping to understand and treat disease, and also because it promises to shed considerable light on human evolution. Already, numerous genes have been found in the new maps that may be linked to disease.

Yesterday's news conference was another milestone in the long-running effort to read all the letters of the human genome. It has been a formal international program for a little over a decade, but it really began in 1953 with the report from Watson and his collaborator, Francis Crick. Crick, still alive and working in California, is a decade older than Watson and does not travel as much.

Watson, 72, president of the famed Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y., was barely 25 when the original paper appeared. He said he was pleased to see the results of a half-century's effort in biological research.

"It's a wonderful day," he declared. But, characteristically, he emphasized that scientists could not rest and that vast amounts of work must still be done to fully understand the genome and to elucidate the causes of disease.

"All of us have different ways we want the knowledge to be used," Watson said. "If diabetes is in your family, you want that understood. If there's mental illness, you want that understood."

At the time Watson and Crick published their first paper, on April 25, 1953,

many people did not recognize the significance of the report, which eventually became as famous for its understatement as its results. "We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A.)," they began. "This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest."

As became clear soon after, they were actually reporting the secret of life on Earth. Their central finding was that DNA was arranged inside cells like a spiral staircase, with a sugary backbone and the actual information carried on the stair steps. This is the famous "double helix."

The critical feature was that the two strands of DNA each carried the same biological information. This meant they could separate, each could be used as a template to build a new double helix, and two daughter cells could then inherit complete DNA. Every living organism on the planet has been created by just such cell divisions.

There was no way then to uncover the actual order of the genetic information, thus no way to peer deeply into the inner workings of cells. But that technology has since been developed, and what scientists reported yesterday is that they've finished rough maps containing the complete order of genetic information for the human race.