Mapping the Future of Gene Research

Originally Published January/February 2001

Erik C. Dellith

Just 10 years ago, students in college-level genetics classes speculated about how advances in gene research would open the doors to new types of therapy and eventually produce a panacea for all of humanity's ills. What seemed like only a dream a decade ago became reality in the late 1990s when scientists revolutionized the biological world by cloning sheep and pigs. More huge news came last summer when the heads of Celera Genomics (Rockville, MD) and the U.S. Human Genome Project (a 15-year endeavor coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health) jointly announced completion of a working copy of the human genome—essentially a map of the basic molecules that make humans what they are.