WASHINGTON (AP) -- Leaders of competing public and private efforts to sequence and map all the human genes will announce jointly on Monday that they have essentially completed the project, placing in proper order most of the 3.1 billion subunits of DNA that make up the genome.
The development could have a staggering impact on science and medicine.
Top executives from the public effort, led by the National Institutes of Health, scheduled trips to Washington over the weekend, but officials said they were still unsure where or when the joint announcement would be made.
A spokeswoman for Celera Genomics, the Maryland company that is competing with the public sequencing program, declined to confirm reports from other sources that there would be a joint announcement on Monday.
"Celera is on track to complete the first assembly of the human genome in June," said Heather Kowalski. "Beyond that, I can't say anything."
President Clinton said Thursday night that the announcement would come "in a few days," but he made no mention of where. Some sources said a White House ceremony was under consideration
"Essentially, everything is still up in the air," said one spokesman, who asked not to be named. A firm time is expected to be announced over the weekend.
Sources said that since Celera is a publicly held company whose stock is sensitive to such news, the principals may wait until the stock market closes before making an announcement.
Experts consider the decoding of the human gene structure to be one of history's great scientific milestones, sort of the biological equivalent of space science's landing on the moon.
The public gene-sequencing program is a joint effort of the national Human Genome Research Institute at the NIH, the Department of Energy, the Wellcome Trust in Britain, the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass., the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, along with contributions from researchers in Germany and Japan.
Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Human Genome Research Institute, said deciphering the genome will eventually revolutionize medicine, but it will be decades before the full benefits are realized.
Collins said the work will enable doctors to treat the underlying genetic causes of hundreds of human disorders, including heart disease and cancer.
A fundamental understanding of how genes affect disease will lead to new drugs, to individually designed treatments and, perhaps, to correction of gene flaws before birth.
Decoding the genome involves placing in correct order the 3.1 billion base pairs, or subunits that make up human DNA. Imbedded in this DNA are about 50,000 genes -- nobody knows the exact number.
Once the genes are identified, researchers then must identify the proteins made by those genes, determine the function of that protein in the body and then devise therapeutic drugs.
