Human Genome Work Reaches Milestone

It’s official. Biology’s hottest race has been declared an amicable tie, even though one competitor has a clear lead and neither has actually reached the finish line or knows exactly what the prize contains.

In an accomplishment being compared to landing a man on the moon, rival groups of scientists from the private and public sectors announced on June 23 that each has read essentially all of the 3 billion or so letters that spell out the human genome, the genetic information encoded within the 6 feet of DNA coiled up in every human cell.