BAC Banks: A historical legacy for genomics research

Abstract

The problem of the translation of scientific research to particular outputs has been primarily conceived in the sphere of biomedical research. It was posed partly in response to the difficulties that have been experienced in attempts to use the data generated by the human genome project to achieve therapeutic outcomes.

In this talk I detail some of the initial findings of a 5-year project into the history of modern genomics, which aims to produce insights as to the nature of translational research processes in the biological sciences. Key to this effort is examining genomic research into non-human species – yeast and pigs – as well as humans.

My research concerns the history of pig genomics, and covers the mapping projects (PiGMaP) funded by the European Commission from 1991-1996 and the sequencing project conducted under the direction of the Swine Genome Sequencing Consortium (2006-2009).

Based on an account of these projects, I will detail an interpretation of the nature of genome sequencing that provides a model for examining the relationship between genomics and translation, and suggest that different modes of translation may operate for pig genomics than for human genomics.