The clearest present proof of its shotgun method may lie in its mouse genome, assembled just with Celera data, which the company will offer to its subscribers.
But in catching up with Celera, the consortium can now make the assembled mouse genome freely available, as well.
Other scientists said a principal reason for the National Cancer Institute's decision to subscribe might have been the availability of Celera's assembled mouse genome.
BLASTing human transcripts vs. the fully assembled mouse genome (NCBI build 32), we found 2709 ultra-conserved regions.
Mouse genome (GRCm38/mm10) indicates Mus musculus genome assembled by the Genome Reference Consortium (GRCm38), UCSC version 10. tRFs, especially the tRF-5 series, are the second most abundant after microRNAs (Table 1).
Dr. Venter suggested that the N.I.H. should cease its own effort to sequence and assemble the mouse genome because the work duplicated what Celera had already done.
Celera's president, Dr. J. Craig Venter, said that he would draw the DNA from three strains of mouse, to study the natural variation of the mouse genome, and that he would assemble a "humanized mouse genome," one with the genes arranged in the same order as their counterparts on the human genome instead of in the natural mouse order.
As proof that the shotgun assembly method would have worked almost as well without the shredded public data, Dr. Myers says that he has assembled the mouse genome, which is about the same size as the human genome, using Celera-only data, with very similar results.
Besides mutant mice, the lab also maintains a computer database, Mouse Genome Informatics (www.informatics.jax.org), which assembles most known information about the mouse.
Although mouse DNA is every bit as hard to decipher as human DNA, and just as important in finding genes to combat disease, there was no brouhaha today when Celera Genomics of Rockville, Maryland, announced that it has sequenced and assembled the entire mouse genome.
