NORTH WALES, Pa. — At Merck’s
“automated biotechnology facility” here, robot arms adapted from
automobile factories deftly shuttle plates containing human cells.
Assisted by the robots and other complex machinery, scientists are studying what happens to the cells as each of the roughly 22,000 human genes is turned off. They hope to find the genes involved in different diseases, the starting point for creating a drug.
It is a merger of sophisticated biology and brute force made possible only because the Human Genome Project provided the identity of all the human genes. But as with so much else that has spun off from the genome project, it is also an expensive gamble, with success far from assured.
To read the full, original article click on this link: The Genome at 10 - A Decade Later, Gene Map Has Yielded Few New Drugs - NYTimes.com
Author: ANDREW POLLACK
