 Claire M. Fraser of TIGR on Microbial Genomes
While the sequencing of the human genome has been the more mediagenic project, the sequencing of microbial organisms has led to a revolution in scientific understanding of the microbial world. Since The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Maryland, first published the sequence of Haemophilus influenzae in 1995, nearly 60 fully sequenced microbial genomes have been published, and well over 100 more are in the works. The list reads like a litany of mankind's historic scourges, including the organisms that underlie pneumonia, tuberculosis, gonorrhea, meningitis, malaria, leishmaniasis, and salmonella.
"It's time to make a shift in the types of microbial organisms that we sequence," says Claire M. Fraser, president of The Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Maryland. "If we're going to understand biodiversity on the planet, we're going to have to start looking beyond what's targeted so far."
Nearly half of those sequences have come out of TIGR, making the organization's current president, Claire Fraser, one of the hottest biologists of the last two years (as was noted in this publication last spring—see
Science
Watch, 12[2]:1-2, March/April
2001). Recently four articles on microbial genomes coauthored by Fraser
in the last two years...
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