James Watson's and Craig Venter's personal genome sequence

Craig Venter’s genome was published on September in Plos Biology. The analysis and assembly of the 20 billion bp of Venter’s DNA is the first look at both set of chromosomes of an individual, and has shown a greater degree and more kinds of genetic variation than expected. As a matter of fact, human to human variation has proved to be 5-7 times higher than in previous genome reference sequence . Inclusion of insertion and deletions into a conservative estimate of interchromosomal difference reveals that only 99,5 % similarity exists between the two chromosomal copies of an individual. To note, the estimated difference between the human genome and the chimpanzee is only 2, 7%. James Watson’s sequence has also been completed, and Jim received a DVD documenting his personal sequence in a ceremony at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas in May 2007. Although not yet confirmed by a peer-reviewed scientific paper, unofficial voices on the composition of Watson genome appeared already on several magazines worldwide. Apparently the analysis of the genome of James Watson showed that 16% of his genes are likely to derive from a black ancestor of African descent. Most people of European descent would have no more than 1%. As reported in online version of Times magazine, Kari Stefansson of deCODE Genetics (the company who carried out the analysis) said that this level is what you would expect in someone whose great-grandparent was African. Given Watson’s opinions on race, and his recent claim that black people are less intelligent than whites on a genetic basis, the discovery sounds ironic. Seems that Watson was not available to comment on this. If you’re curios and want to find out yourself the truth, you can browse James Watson’s genome sequence at http://jimwatsonsequence.cshl.edu/cgi-perl/gbrowse/jwsequence/.