You could call it the Watson and Crick effect. A project to decode people’s DNA and publish it online has been swamped with support from enthusiastic Britons, despite the risk it carries.
Some 10,000 individuals have registered to take part in the Personal Genome Project (PGP), ten times more than were expected to do so a year after its launch. It was the “highest spontaneous reaction of any country involved in this type of project,” Stephan Beck, the director of the PGP in the UK, said.
The PGP wants to “sequence” the DNA of 100,000 people in Britain, deciphering all the information held in each person’s genes. It aims to publish its first 100 sequenced genomes online by September.
“It was an amazing response and