May 24-26 The first serious discussion of the possibility of sequencing the human genome was convened in 1985 by Robert Sinsheimer, then chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz. Many thought the idea was crazy or, at best, premature.” And so it proceeded, according to National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins and co-authors, who present experiences in organizing and managing this complicated, publicly funded, international effort in “The Human Genome Project: Lessons from Large-Scale Biology.” According to Collins et al, “We believe that many of the lessons we learned [during The Human Genome Project] will be applicable to future large-scale projects in biology.
Read Dr. Sinsheimer’s account of the Santa Cruz Workshop and hear Dr. Harry Noller speak about the episode, as told to the UCSC Institute of the Arts and Sciences (IAS)’s Collective Museum.
Read Michael S. Waterman’s account and Robert M. Cook-Deegan’s The Gene Wars and The Human Genome Project to learn more about the first serious discussion of sequencing the entire human genome, which took place at this influential May 1985 meeting at University of California Santa Cruz.