Scientist James Watson of DNA fame gets his own genome map
By JUAN A. LOZANO
Associated Press Writer

US scientist and DNA discoverer James Watson poses at an exhibition in Berlin Monday, Oct. 11, 2004. He is behind a model of the 'DNA Double Helix', which was discovered by him and Francis Crick. The 1962 Nobel Prize-winning scientist who helped discover the structure of DNA has become the first person to receive his own personal genome map.

HOUSTON (AP) The Nobel Prize-winning scientist who helped discover the structure of DNA has become the first person to receive his own personal genome map.

The map, a breakdown of James Watson's DNA that shows illnesses he is predisposed to contracting, is the first step in making the sequencing of individual human genomes quick, affordable and a routine part of medical care, according to researchers.

"I knew I was risking possible anxiety when I saw it,'' said the 79-year-old Watson, who was presented the map during a ceremony at the Baylor College of Medicine. "But it's much more that if I don't sleep at night it's due to thinking about Iraq rather than about my genome.''

Watson was chosen for the project because of his contributions to the field.

The $1 million (euro740,000), two-month project was a collaboration between 454 Life Sciences Corp., a Connecticut company that specializes in DNA sequencing, and Baylor College of Medicine's Human Genome Sequencing Center. There are no plans to complete more maps in the immediate future, though researchers eventually want to map more people.

Jonathan Rothberg, founder and former chairman of 454 Life Sciences, said the price of mapping someone's genome sequence eventually could drop to $1,000 (euro743), making it possible for people to incorporate it into their medical care.

That potential price tag is in sharp contrast to the cost of the Human Genome Project, the international, publicly financed effort to first identify all the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA. That 13-year project, seen as one of history's great scientific milestones, cost $3 billion and was completed in 2003.

Watson, who shared a Nobel Prize for his role in discovering the structure of DNA in 1953 and who launched the Human Genome Project in 1990, said thousands more individual human genomes need to be mapped before researchers can make better sense of the information they can provide.

Amy McGuire, an assistant professor of medicine with Baylor's Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, said integrating human genomes into medical diagnoses raises various ethical questions. Those include what to do when they reveal personal information about a patient's relatives and whether someone's genetic code could result in discrimination from insurance companies or employers.

A review showed Watson has some variances that could induce cancer _ which appeared to mirror his actual health. Watson said he has had skin cancer and that his sister had breast cancer.

While Watson said he would review the map further, he planned to skip the section of the map that would tell him if he was at risk for Alzheimer's disease, which his grandmother died from.