他们如今身在何方？

SCIENCE reporting usually concentrates on the science, not the scientists. Though the minds and hands behind the research are acknowledged, the real story is the discovery itself and its place in the jigsaw of human understanding. That, and the fact that modern scientific investigation tends to be a team effort, has diminished the cult of the celebrity scientist. The human-genome project was an exception to this rule. It created some scientific celebrities and also some celebrated rivalries. Ten years on the reader might wonder what has happened to them.

科学报道通常都聚焦于科学本身，而不会着重介绍科学家。尽管相关研究人员的名字也会公布于众，但是报道的主线还是会围绕着新发现本身及其在人类认知拼图上占据的位置。另外，现代科学研究往往侧重于团队合作。这两种现状使得人们如今已经不再对有名望的科学家顶礼膜拜。然而，在人类基因组工程领域，事情却一度反其道而行之。在这一领域中曾不仅出现了很多科学界名流，也引发了多起著名的研究之争。十年来，读者们也许会有些好奇：他们又经历了怎样的变化？更多信息请访问:http://www.24en.com/

The loosest cannon of the lot was probably James Watson. Dr Watson, co-discoverer with Francis Crick of the double-helical structure of DNA, was responsible for suggesting the human-genome project in the first place. At the time he was head of America’s National Centre for Human Genome Research, part of the country’s National Institutes of Health (NIH). He fell out with the NIH, however, over the issue of patenting DNA sequences called expressed sequence tags. He opposed this, arguing that “you shouldn’t patent something a monkey could do.” That did not endear him to Craig Venter, who had created the DNA in question. Dr Watson was replaced by Francis Collins, a man regarded by some biologists as ideologically unsound because he is a born-again Christian. Dr Watson continued as head of the Cold Spring Harbour genetics laboratory until 2007, when he made some injudicious remarks about genetics and black people and found himself suddenly retired.

这些人士中最特立独行的当属James Watson。Watson博士曾联手Francis Crick共同发现了DNA的双螺旋结构，并最早提出启动人类基因组工程计划。当时，他还担任着国立人体基因组研究所（隶属美国国立卫生研究院NIH）所长。由于在是否授予名为表达序列标签的DNA序列专利权这一问题上的分歧，他与NIH闹翻了。他极力反对为这一序列颁发专利，坚持认为“人们不应该给连猴子都能做到的事情颁发专利。”他这样做， 使得发现该DNA（即表达序列标签DNA）的Craig Venter心中很不爽。Waston博士的所长一职很快就被Francis Collins取代。Francis Collins是一位半路改宗的基督教徒，因此一些生物学家认为他信仰不坚定。Waston博士则继续担任冷泉港基因学实验室主任，直到2007年，他就遗传学与黑种人之间的关系发表了一些不当言论，随即就被解职。

Dr Venter, too, left the NIH in the wake of the expressed-sequence-tag incident. At first he teamed up with Bill Haseltine, a virus geneticist with a record as an entrepreneur, to start an institute and a company, Human Genome Sciences, to exploit expressed sequence tags. The two failed to see eye to eye, though, and Dr Venter went on to help create a second firm, Celera, in the hope of beating the public project to the human genome. He used a new DNA-sequencing technique called whole-genome shotgunning that he and a colleague, Hamilton Smith, had invented, and patented a good tranche of human genes on the way. That was anathema to Dr Collins and his British counterpart, John Sulston (who was head of the Wellcome Trust’s Sanger Centre, now known as the Sanger Institute, which did about a third of the public project), who wanted genes to be public goods and started racing Celera to stop the firm finding genes first.

Venter博士在表达序列标签事件之后也离开了NIH。起初，他同拥有企业家经验的病毒基因学家Bill Haseltine合作建立了一家机构，也是一家公司——人类基因组科学公司，开发表达序列标签。但是二人终未能达成一致，因此Venter博士又建立了第二家公司——Celera，希望超过公共项目（团队）率先解码人类基因组图。他采用了一种名为全基因组鸟枪测序的DNA测序技术，这一新技术是他和同事Hamilton Smith共同研发的，已经为许多人类基因颁发了专利。这引起了Collins博士及其同为所长的英国同行John Sulston的强烈反感。John Sulston时任韦尔科姆基金会桑格研究所（现名桑格学院）所长，该研究所完成了人类基因组工程约三分之一的工作，他希望基因可以成为公共商品并与Celera公司展开竞争，避免对手率先发现新的基因。

At this point, heads were knocked together in the public project, chiefly by Eric Lander, of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose outfit achieved effective leadership of the American arm of the project. It was Dr Lander whose name led the list of researchers on the paper eventually published by Nature in 2001.

与此同时，麻省剑桥城怀特黑德研究院的人类基因组工程也是人才济济，这支主要由Eric Lander领军的团队已经取得了人类基因组工程美国部分实际上的领导地位。最终于2001年由《自然》杂志发表的论文中，Lander博士的名字位列研究人员之首。

Celera’s version of the genome was published by Nature’s rival, Science. Unfortunately, this scientific triumph did not produce much in the way of revenue and Dr Venter was sacked from the firm in 2002. (Dr Haseltine left Human Genome Sciences in 2004.) Dr Venter then went on a round-the-world cruise on his yacht, collecting bacterial samples from the sea for a project he dubbed the Global Ocean Sampling Expedition. He also set up yet another research institute (which unveiled an organism with an artificial genome last month) and another commercial arm, called Synthetic Genomics, in collaboration with Dr Smith.

Celera版本的基因组发表在了《科学》杂志上——《自然》杂志的死对头。不幸的是，这一科学领域的胜利并未给公司赢得丰厚的收入，2002年，Venter博士被公司解雇。（Haseltine博士在2004年离开了人体工程科学公司。）随后他乘坐自己的游艇周游世界，从海水中收集细菌样品以完成被他称为全球海洋样品考察的计划。同时，他又建立了一个研究机构（上个月该机构推出了一个由人造基因组构成的有机体）并同Smith博士一道建立了一家商务分支机构，名为合成基因学公司。

Dr Lander, too, has added to the number of America’s research laboratories. With money from two Californian benefactors of that name he has set up the Broad Institute, America’s largest genome-sequencing lab, next door to the Whitehead. Dr Sulston, meanwhile, has started a scientific-ethics institute at Manchester University and Dr Collins has bagged one of the top prizes in American science. He is now head of the NIH.

Lander博士同样也为美国研究实验室数量的增加做出了贡献。在两位姓氏为博德的加利福尼亚赞助人的资助下，他建立起了美国最大的基因组测序实验室——博德研究所，该研究所就位于怀特黑德研究所隔壁。与此同时Sulston博士在曼彻斯特大学建立了一家科学伦理机构。Collins博士已将美国科学界最高奖项之一收入囊中，他现任NIH院长。