Matt Ridley - When the history of genome sequencing at the turn of the millennium is written, it will centre on two battles.. The battle over the sequencing of the human genome was bigger and more bitter than the one over sequencing the fruitfly genome; if the human genome was Waterloo, Drosophila was barely even Ligny or Quatre Bras, So why would anybody trouble to read, let alone write, a book about the lesser battle? Michael Ashburner s answer is simple: for the story, not the history, He has written — or rather, he wrote, for these are his immediate reactions, mostly committed to paper at the time — an idiosyncratic, gonzo romp through the crazy days of 1998-99, His purpose, he writes, "frankly, was therapy".
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