Where the future went

In July this year, Celera Genomics (Rockville, MD, USA) placed its formerly proprietary genome sequence data into the public domain, thereby ending the first grand business experiment in the era of commercial genome sequencing. In 1998, Celera vowed to use its shotgun‐sequencing method to outrace the publicly funded Human Genome Project and complete its own draft sequence. Sparked partly by fears that Celera could obtain commercial control of the human genome, the public project boosted its efforts and finances to match the challenge.![][1] When both drafts of the human genome sequence were published in February 2001, Celera's version was widely considered to be superior to the public sequence, which was immediately released for general use. Celera set out to profit from its effort by licensing its database—and subsequent databases of mouse and rat genome information—to companies and academic institutions. It was an initial success, but the customer base eventually dwindled. Celera and its parent company, Applera Corporation (Norwalk, CT, USA), saw the writing on the wall, and split the business into separate diagnostics (Celera Diagnostics) and drug discovery (Celera Genomics) companies in 2002. The move to make its data public is a gesture of goodwill from Celera, but it also stands to benefit its sister company, Applied Biosystems (Foster City, CA, USA), which supplies researchers with gene‐expression assays and other research tools.Throughout its history, Celera has been a bellwether. Many companies, such as Incyte (Wilmington, DE, USA) and CuraGen (New Haven, CT, USA), joined the genome market in the late 1990s. The Incyte expressed sequence tag (EST) database, which contained DNA from normal and diseased tissue, was also a highly valued resource for biomedical research and drug development. However, like Celera, Incyte saw demand drop as the publicly available National Center for Biotechnology Information GenBank database increased in quality. … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif