Hapmap flap

Two years ago, when biologists declared victory in sequencing the human genome, the announcement seemed all the more believable because the president of the United States himself was there to share the glory. Two years later, cancer has still not been cured, the major genetic causes of diabetes have not been uncovered, and truth be told, the human genome has still not really been fully sequenced. So perhaps it's not such a surprise that when some of the same cast of characters assembled once again to announce a project that could possibly make all that genomic information clinically relevant, there were no blinding lights, no banks of television cameras, no Secret Service security checks, and no Page One headlines. The announcement in question took place in Washington on 29 October. Like the genome project, it involved scientists around the world — US, England, Japan, China and Canada — and commercial enterprises as well. The challenge they are taking on is to create a haplotype map, or hapmap, to catalog the common variants in the human genome. The project could have 'a profound impact on the future of medicine,' reported the Washington Post, quoting Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. '[Collins said] it was an essential next step in turning the promise of the Human Genome Project into concrete health information.' The hope (and hype?) springs from an observation, less than two years ago, that there are perhaps just 200,000 segments of DNA that reshuffle in the course of human reproduction. Each segment comes in a small number of varieties (haplotypes), maybe 4 or 5. Even though the number of possible recombinations is still a mighty number —200,000 to the 4th or 5th power — it's not nearly as staggering as trying to understand human variations by looking at possible recombinations for all 3 billion base-pairs of DNA, or even the 10 million or so single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) thought to be lurking in the genome. But the promise is so uncertain, journalists don't know what to make of it. The Houston Chronicle decided to play it safe by playing up the local angle: 'With a blueprint of the human genome all but complete, Baylor College of Medicine scientists have joined an international team of researchers who will now map the genetic variations contributing to humanity's most common illnesses, including heart disease and cancer.' The Wall Street …