Social Science seminar - Sequencing, bibliometrics and history Title: Sequencing, bibliometrics and history: a ‘from below’ perspective on the emergence of human genomics Speaker: Miguel Garcia-Sancho, Science, Technology and Innovation Studies Abstract: In this talk, I will argue that the current, common understanding of the phrase ‘the human genome’ is derived from a historically-specific strategy to determine its full DNA sequence. This strategy originated in the mid-1990s and came to the spotlight after the publication of the first draft of the Human Genome Project in 2001. The main authors of this publication were five large-scale sequencing centres – dubbed the genomic G5 –that claimed to have determined 82% of the three billion nucleotide units constitutive of human DNA through industrial, high-throughput sequencing technologies. In this effort, they competed with a parallel, large-scale sequencing project led by the company Celera Genomics. Yet at the same time of these large-scale initiatives, other institutions with smaller technological capacities were co-ordinating their work to sequence increasingly larger areas of the human genome. These institutions included hospitals, charities, university medical schools and biotechnology companies. Their work, despite having been addressed by historians of medical genetics, is often overlooked in the historiography of genomics. Building on the notion of connected histories, I will show the synergies, rivalries and different philosophies behind these two approaches to the human genome: a more expedite one seeking rapid completion and embodied by Celera and the G5, and a more gradualist one prioritising the immediate use of the sequence in a variety of clinical and pre-clinical settings. My objective is to overcome the common narrative of a race between public and private genome projects, and to offer a more integrative account of the interactions between the practices of DNA sequencing and the idea of one (or many) human genome(s). My work draws on the analysis of a network that visualises co-authorship relations between more than 6,000 institutions that published newly determined human sequences in the scientific literature between 1985 and 2005. The presence of the G5 sequencing centres in this network is rather modest, which suggests that they prioritised contributing to open-access sequence databases over publishing. The institutions that most profusely published in this period always sought a medical objective in sequencing and often chose as their co-authors hospitals or start-up companies that were likely to be based in the same city or region. This presentation is based on the results of the project Medical Translation in the History of Modern Genomics, which is being conducted at the University of Edinburgh with funding from the European Research Council. Please feel free to bring lunch and there is no need to register. May 14 2019 13.00 - 14.00 Social Science seminar - Sequencing, bibliometrics and history Social Science seminar Usher Room, Doorway 1, Old Medical School, Teviot Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9AG
Social Science seminar - Sequencing, bibliometrics and history Title: Sequencing, bibliometrics and history: a ‘from below’ perspective on the emergence of human genomics Speaker: Miguel Garcia-Sancho, Science, Technology and Innovation Studies Abstract: In this talk, I will argue that the current, common understanding of the phrase ‘the human genome’ is derived from a historically-specific strategy to determine its full DNA sequence. This strategy originated in the mid-1990s and came to the spotlight after the publication of the first draft of the Human Genome Project in 2001. The main authors of this publication were five large-scale sequencing centres – dubbed the genomic G5 –that claimed to have determined 82% of the three billion nucleotide units constitutive of human DNA through industrial, high-throughput sequencing technologies. In this effort, they competed with a parallel, large-scale sequencing project led by the company Celera Genomics. Yet at the same time of these large-scale initiatives, other institutions with smaller technological capacities were co-ordinating their work to sequence increasingly larger areas of the human genome. These institutions included hospitals, charities, university medical schools and biotechnology companies. Their work, despite having been addressed by historians of medical genetics, is often overlooked in the historiography of genomics. Building on the notion of connected histories, I will show the synergies, rivalries and different philosophies behind these two approaches to the human genome: a more expedite one seeking rapid completion and embodied by Celera and the G5, and a more gradualist one prioritising the immediate use of the sequence in a variety of clinical and pre-clinical settings. My objective is to overcome the common narrative of a race between public and private genome projects, and to offer a more integrative account of the interactions between the practices of DNA sequencing and the idea of one (or many) human genome(s). My work draws on the analysis of a network that visualises co-authorship relations between more than 6,000 institutions that published newly determined human sequences in the scientific literature between 1985 and 2005. The presence of the G5 sequencing centres in this network is rather modest, which suggests that they prioritised contributing to open-access sequence databases over publishing. The institutions that most profusely published in this period always sought a medical objective in sequencing and often chose as their co-authors hospitals or start-up companies that were likely to be based in the same city or region. This presentation is based on the results of the project Medical Translation in the History of Modern Genomics, which is being conducted at the University of Edinburgh with funding from the European Research Council. Please feel free to bring lunch and there is no need to register. May 14 2019 13.00 - 14.00 Social Science seminar - Sequencing, bibliometrics and history Social Science seminar Usher Room, Doorway 1, Old Medical School, Teviot Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9AG
May 14 2019 13.00 - 14.00 Social Science seminar - Sequencing, bibliometrics and history Social Science seminar
