Conclusions: A Long History of Practices

Abstract

In this book I have investigated the changing and sometimes conflicting identities that bio-molecular sequencing acquired during the second half of the twentieth century. Sequence determination emerged in the mid-1940s within protein chemistry and over the subsequent three decades it entered the technical and conceptual repertoire of evolutionary and molecular biology. In this transition, sequence determination absorbed a multiplicity of practices which were alien to its original institutional and disciplinary setting. Its employment within the study of evolution resulted in the adaptation of algorithms initially designed for the manipulation of strings of data in computer programming and, more generally, for information management in military centres, public administration and offices of multinational corporations. Usage within molecular biology led to the incorporation of instruments and experimental strategies designed to replicate biological processes rather than chemically degrade molecules. Molecular biology also framed the gradual expansion of sequence determination from proteins to nucleic acids, through the study of the so-called coding problem — that is, how DNA, as the genetic material, directed the synthesis of proteins.

People ask why I want to get the human genome. Some suggest that the reason is that it would be a wonderful end to my career — start out with the double helix and end up with the human genome. That is a good story. It seems almost a miracle to me that fifty years ago we could have been so ignorant of the nature of the genetic material and now can imagine that we will have the complete genetic blueprint of man…. There is a greater degree of urgency among older scientists than among younger ones to do the human genome now. The younger scientists can work on their grants until they are bored and still get the genome before they die. But to me it is crucial that we get the human genome now rather than twenty years from now, because I might be dead then and I don’t want to miss out on learning how life works.

Watson, 1992, pp. 164–5.