Genomic era, year zero

In 1995 a group of scientists led by Craig Venter, at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Maryland, published a landmark paper in the journal Science. This paper reported the complete DNA sequence (the genome) of a free-living organism, the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae (or H. influenzae, for short). Up until that moment, only small viral genomes or small parts of other genomes had been sequenced. The first viral genome sequence (that of phage phiX174) was produced by Fred Sanger's group in 1978, followed a few years later by the sequence of human mitochondrial DNA by the same group. Sanger – working in Cambridge, UK – was awarded two Nobel prizes, the first one in 1958 for developing protein sequencing techniques and the second one in 1980 for developing DNA sequencing techniques. A bacterial sequence, however, is enormously larger than a viral one, making the H. influenzae paper a true milestone. Given the order of magnitude increase in genome size that was sequenced by the group at TIGR, the genomic era can be said to have started in 1995.

• Genomes and genomic sequences

• Probabilistic models of sequences

• Statistical properties of sequences

• Standard data formats and databases

A few months later the same group at TIGR published an analysis of the full genome of another bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium – a microbe responsible for urethritis – and shortly thereafter the sequence of the first eukaryote, the fungus, Saccharomyces cerevisiae (or S. cerevisiae, baker's yeast) was published by other groups.