How expensive? Well, the pilot project cost $100 million, so this is going to be a costly effort even by genomics standards; the total expense, over the next ten years or so, may reach $1.5 billion according to a recent news article in the journal Science.
Dan uses the project as a springboard to weigh up the merits of the Big Science approach - research performed on a massive scale by large, multi-centre collaborations rather than the traditional small-scale, more focused work performed by individual labs. The benefits of the Big Science approach are obviously embodied in the public Human Genome and HapMap projects, both of which have utterly changed the way human genetics is done.
In fact, it's hard to think of a recent Big Science project in human genetics that hasn't exceeded expectations, to the horror of its inevitable early detractors. Dan hints that Evan Eichler's recent $40 million grant to categorise structural variation in the human genome may be an example of Big Science money that could have been more effectively spent on other projects, but it's probably too soon to judge this with any certainty. And while it's true that the recent rash of genome-wide association collaborations such as the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium have captured a disappointingly small (indeed, sometimes non-existent) fraction of the genetic risk for many common diseases, they have also provided powerful insight into the genetic architecture of human traits, novel information about disease mechanisms, and a set of massive cohorts with high-quality DNA samples to drive future large-scale sequencing projects.
Perhaps the biggest danger of the phenomenal success of the Human Genome and HapMap projects is that this success provides a fully general counter-argument to wield against nay-sayers for any future Big Science endeavour, however foolish. ("Oh, so you claim that my proposed project to sequence the human [whatever]ome is too expensive and technically impossible? Well, they said the same thing about the HapMap project!" Opponents exit, broken, stage right; funding agencies enter with bags of cash, stage left.)
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4 comments:
I just left "big science". Until the birth of my daughter last year, I was a post-doc in the lab of Evan Eichler, and yes, the lab was a hub-bub of activity hoping to become big science.
Now, it was really exciting, and I am a supporter of structural variation research, personally, and a believer in the potential value of big science, professionally. However, it has, in my opinion, changed the landscape of research, and not necessarily in positive ways.
1) It creates huge pots of money that are vied over viciously between rockstar scientists with ... largish egos. I mean, most of us scientists have an ego, whether we admit it or not, but there are egos and then there are EGOS. This means that a person's political skills can become more important than their scientific skills at getting grants.
2) This competition and the egos also mean that sometimes you have two or more groups doing the same thing, and trying to do it "better" and first. Now, that's not new in science, but it sure would be nice if we could all get together and pool our respective resources and brain power, rather than spending time and energy competing with the other "team".
Especially since, ostensibly, we're doing research science to help everyday people, rather than our own careers.
Academic science these days has changed, and big science is a significant part of that. I don't think it's going away, and it does get some important projects done that would be almost impossible otherwise. But I think it would be wise for universities and funding agencies to maintain a good mix of both "small" and "big" science.
After all, "small" science can't be that ineffective, it did get us to where we are today.
Bye,
Tera Eerkes
www.genedream.net/wordpress
Phenomenal success? You got to be kidding! The publicly funded human genome project was a flop at what it was actually supposed to get done. Without the competition of Celera it would have been a typical government project - way over budget, way past the deadline. Celera did a lion's share of the work. Without their contribution of the whole genome shotgun approach, it may not have ever come together. Who is the Cancer Project equivalent that is going to push this big science?
Josh
Hi Joshua,
Yes, phenomenal success. The HGP sequence has had a tremendous impact on biomedical science; most of us working in human genetics use it nearly every day in one way or another. I don't think there's any question that the benefits of the Project have massively outweighed its costs, contrary to the claims of its early critics.
Sure, the competition from Celera was an important component of the HGP getting a draft out so quickly - but how does that make the Project a "flop"?
Without the competition of Celera it would have been a typical government project - way over budget, way past the deadline. Celera did a lion's share of the work.
this is not true. surely you're aware that Celera used the public data as part of their project in order to get something useful out of it (in a way that raised a few hackles--rightfully, in my view; see here), while the public project didn't use any of Celera's data.
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