Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research/MIT Center for Genome Research

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Eric S. Lander
Lauren Linton
http://www.broad.mit.edu/
Seema Kumar
617-258-6153
kumar@wi.mit.edu

The Center is the largest public sequencing center in the world and the leading contributor to the international Human Genome Project -having contributed roughly 25% of the sequence of the working draft of the human genome. The Center has been a leader in the development of novel automation technologies and computational packages for genome analysis, as well as having pioneered the policy of prompt and free data release to the scientific community. The Center developed the first comprehensive physical map of the human chromosomes, the first comprehensive genetic and physical maps of the mouse genome and the first comprehensive genetic map of the rat genome. These tools have made possible the mapping and molecular identification of thousands of mammalian genes.

Sanger Centre

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The Sanger Centre is a genome research centre founded by the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council to further the knowledge of genomes, particularly through large-scale sequencing and analysis. The Centre is situated on the Wellcome Trust genome Campus at Hinxton Hall near Cambridge. The Sanger Centre was established in 1993 with a staff of 17. Today, about 600 staff are employed on genomics and post-genomics projects. In 1998, the team at the Sanger Centre, together with Dr Robert Waterston's group at Washington University, St Louis, finished the sequence of the 100 million base-pair genome of the nematode worm C. elegans, establishing the methods for analysis of large genomes. Today the sequence of the C. elegans genome is an invaluable resource in understanding gene function.

Washington University Genome Sequencing Center

The Washington University Genome Sequencing Center operates under the direction of Robert H. Waterston, M.D., Ph.D., the James S. McDonnell Professor of Genetics and head of the Department of Genetics, and Richard K. Wilson, Ph.D., associate director of the center and research associate professor of genetics. The St. Louis project began in July 1993, when Waterston received a $29.7 million grant from the National Center for Human Genome Research (NCHGR).

In completing the sequence of the entire 100 million base-pair genome of the roundworm, C. elegans, with the Sanger Center in 1998, the Washington University Genome Sequencing Center played a significant role in establishing the methods for analysis of large genomes.

US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute

Lawrence Livermore, Lawrence Berkeley, and Los Alamos National Laboratories had been working on the Human Genome Project since 1996 when the three joined forces to form the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) funded by the Department of Energy's Office of Biological and Environmental Research. The JGI is tucked away in a light industrial park in Walnut Creek, California, about 35 miles north of Livermore. There, the employees of the three institutions are working together to sequence human chromosomes 5, 16, and 19 for the worldwide Human Genome Project. The completion of the draft sequence of these three chromosomes was announced in April 2000, a year ahead of schedule. Since then, work on finishing the sequence for chromosomes 5, 16, and 19 shifted to the Stanford Genome Center where the sequencing process will continue to fill in gaps. Stanford joined the JGI in October 1999.

Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center

Houston, TX, USA
Richard A. Gibbs
http://www.hgsc.bcm.tmc.edu
Dorey Zodrow
713-798-7965
Pager-800-609-9162
dzodrow@bcm.tmc.edu

Large-scale genomic sequencing at Baylor College of Medicine began in 1993 in the laboratory of Dr. Richard Gibbs. The Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center was established in 1996 as a one of six large-scale sequencing pilot projects funded by NHGRI. The Center entered into a new phase in March of 1999, as part of a research network for large-scale sequencing, in collaboration with the Washington University Genome Sequencing Center and Whitehead Institute/ MIT.

RIKEN Genomic Sciences Center

Yokohama-city, Japan
Yoshiyuki Sakaki
Asao Fujiyama
http://hgp.gsc.riken.go.jp/
Mr. Tomita
H3tomita@mext.go.jp

RIKEN Genomic Sciences Center is the largest genome center in Japan, consisting of six research groups with about 300 employees. Its current major activities include large-scale protein structure analysis, and large-scale mouse saturation mutagenesis projects. The Center is playing leading roles in human and mouse genomics and its major achievements include complete sequence analysis of human chromosome 21 and sequence analysis of 20000 mouse full-length cDNAs.

Genoscope and CNRS UMR-8030

The mission of Genoscope, France's National Sequencing Center, is to produce large quantities of high-quality sequence data from genomes of diverse organisms (microbes, plants, animals, humans) of scientific, medical or economic interest. Created by the French government in 1997, it has participated in the Human Genome Project, the Arabidopsis Genome Initiative and is sequencing the genome of Tetraodon nigroviridis, a small pufferfish with a compact genome that should provide a valuable tool for human genome analysis. It has sequenced most of human chromosome 14 and is presently coordinating the completion of the sequence of this chromosome.

Genome Therapeutics operates two lines of business: genomics services and biopharmaceutical products. The genomics services business focuses on services that enable other organizations to achieve their drug discovery objectives and includes the GTC Sequencing Center and the PathoGenomeTM Database. The GTC Sequencing Center, one of the world's largest commercial DNA sequencing operations, provides researchers worldwide with access to industrial scale sequencing and sequence variation detection. The GTC Sequencing Center is an active participant in the ongoing Human Genome Project as well as the Rat Genome Project funded by the NHGRI.

Department of Genome Analysis, Institute of Molecular Biotechnology

The Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMB) in Jena, German, is a basic research facility at the borderline between Genome Analysis, Molecular Biology, and Structural Biology. In the framework of the German Human Genome Project, the Department of Genome Analysis has performed mapping and sequencing of the human chromosomes 8, 21 and X. Being the largest group of the German Genome Sequencing Consortium, the department played a key role in sequencing chromosome 21 published in May 2000. Moreover, the Department of Genome Analysis contributed to the pilot phase of the Mouse Genome Project and is a major participant in the Dictyostelium discoideum Genome Project.

Beijing Genomics Institute/Human Genome Center, Institute of Genetics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

The Beijing Genomics and Bioinformatics Institute represents the scientists from China as part of the Human Genome Project. The Institute is composed of two branches, Beijing and Hangzhou, with 300 members and over 80 sequencing machines. Ongoing genome projects include the rice genome and the pig genome.

Multimegabase Sequencing Center, The Institute for Systems Biology

Seattle, WA, USA
Leroy Hood
Geoff Patrick
206-652-9506
http://www.systemsbiology.org

The Stanford Genome Technology Center (SGTC) is located at 855 California Avenue in Palo Alto in the Industrial Park on the Stanford campus. The overall facility contains 17,000 sq. ft. of laboratory space, with over 65 employees. The SGTC mission is to develop technologies for advancing biological discovery through automation and other techniques. In addition to involvement with the human genome sequencing project, SGTC is involved in sequencing the pathogens Plasmodium falciparum (malaria parasite), cryptococcus neoformans (yeast), and Candida albicans (yeast), in addition to the plants Arabidopsis thaliana and maize.

Stanford Human Genome Center and Department of Genetics, Stanford University School of Medicine

The center's initial sequencing was funded by the NHGRI and generated about 28 Mb of draft sequence and about 9 Mb of finished sequence from human chromosome 4. In late 1999, the center began a collaboration, funded by the Department of Energy, with the Joint Genome Institute (the JGI) at Walnut Creek, California to perform sequence finishing on draft sequence of chromosomes 5, 16, and 19 that they generated in their high-throughput facility. The Sequencing Group contributed some draft sequence to these three chromosomes and more than 60 Mb of finished sequence. The SHGC continues to perform finishing, such that they have generated almost 100 Mb of finished sequence at an estimated error rate of less than one error in 250,000 bp, making their small group of about 20 scientists is a large contributor to finished human sequence.

University of Washington Genome Center

The mission of the University of Washington Genome Center is to map and sequence human genomic DNA. There is an emphasis on innovative technology and high data quality. Much of the innovative technology involves software packages developed by researchers associated with the Genome Center, particularly the Phred/Phrap/Consed integrated base-calling and sequence-assembly system. The Center focuses on three aspects of data quality: sequence accuracy, clone validation, and map contiguity.

Department of Molecular Biology, Keio University School of Medicine

Keio University was founded as a private school in 1858 by Mr. Yukichi Fukuzawa who was the foremost educator of his day and made significant contribution to our country in opening the gate to western culture and science at that time. School of Medicine was opened in 1917 by Dr. Shibasaburo Kitasato who was well known for the discovery of a tetanus bacterium in working with Dr. Robert Koch. Department of Molecular Biology was created in the Medical School in 1963 as the first department with such a name in Japan. Human genome sequencing and analysis has been carried out at the new Life Science Center under the direction of Professor Nobuyoshi Shimizu who spent many years in the United States.

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
No longer part of the Consortium

Since it's inception in 1990, the University of Oklahoma's Genome Center, the Advanced Center for Genome Technology (ACGT), under the direction of Dr. Bruce A. Roe, a George Lynn Cross Research Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has played a major role in training and technology development while sequencing genomic regions of high biomedical interest. The center initially was instrumental in sequencing the genes involved in the major forms of leukemia on human chromosomes 9 and 22, several other cancer-related genes, and then in sequencing a large segment of human chromosome 22, the first completely sequenced human chromosome. In addition to depositing almost 18 Mbp of human genomic DNA sequence into the public databases, the Center has produced almost 30 Mbp of mouse genomic sequence data, has studied gene expression in numerous fungal species using the expressed sequence tag (EST) approach, completed the sequences of two bacterial genomes (Streptococcus pyogenes and Neisseria gonorrhoeae), and is in the final stages of sequencing five additional bacterial genomes.

Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics

The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's Genome Center is developing methods and strategies for high throughput sequencing in a wide range of organisms. They are sequencing both animal and plant genomes to better understand their salient features through comparative genomics. They are also applying this technology to gain a better understanding of the genes involved in cancer initiation and progression as well as to better understand the function of plant and animal genes.

GBF - German Research Centre for Biotechnology

The GBF's main areas of research and development are human health and the environment. Applying the methods of biotechnology, the GBF concentrates on finding solutions to medical problems and problems related to environmental protection and the remediation of contaminated sites. The GBF was established in 1976 as the successor to the Institute for Molecular Biological Research. The GBF is the only large-scale research establishment in Germany dedicated solely to biotechnology.