Quick Links

Dear Colleagues,

A few weeks ago, the international human genome sequencing consortium described (in a letter published in the Sept. 1 issue of Science and in a news brief published in the Aug. 31 issue of Nature) a number of electronic sites where the public working draft version of the human sequence can be found in its most useable forms. However, it is clear from a number of recent interactions with investigators, that many are still not aware of the accessibility of this important information. I am writing to make sure that you are aware that the working draft sequence is available and to ask your assistance in helping to make the entire scientific community aware of this valuable resource, by distributing the attached information describing three sites that display the entire working draft sequence and provide tools for its use.

The following links will take investigators directly to three different (but complementary) assembled views of the human genome, together with useful browsing tools that provide a wide variety of annotations of the sequence. These sites are updated very frequently, indeed almost continually.

U. Calif. at Santa Cruz http://genome.ucsc.edu/
National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/guide/and click "Map Viewer"
European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) http://www.ensembl.org/

The NHGRI is sending this information to all NIH staff, both extramural and intramural, as well as to all of our grantees. I hope that you will help us reach the larger scientific community with this important information by distributing this message to your staff and colleagues, your grantees and others with whom your Institute routinely communicates.

Thanks
Francis Collins