Notes - Life Out of Sequence - page 233

that sequence databases belong to the “natural history tradition.” In particu-
lar, he portrays GenBank's success (in contrast with Dayhoff's “failure”) as a
result of its commitment to “open,” as opposed to proprietary, science. Strasser,
“GenBank.”
32. For more on protein crystallography databases, see Berol, “Living
Materials.”
33. Smith, “History of the Genetic Sequence Databases,” 702.
34. Anderson et al., “Preliminary Report” [GenBank papers].
35. National Institutes of Health, “Report and Recommendation,” 1 [GC
papers].
36. Ohtsubo and Davison, letter to Jordan, 1 [GenBank papers]. In addi-
tion to this letter from the Department of Microbiology at the State University
of New York at Stony Brook, Jordan and Cassman received letters supporting
the database from Mark Pearson at the Frederick Cancer Research Center, An-
drew Taylor at the Institute of Molecular Biology at the University of Oregon,
and Charles Yanofsky at the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford.
37. Theoretical Biology and Biophysics Group, “ Proposal to Establish a
National Center” [WBG papers].
38. Theoretical Biology and Biophysics Group, “Proposal to Establish a
National Center” [WBG papers]
39. In fact, it was a fully developed relational database management
system.
40. Smith, “History of the Genetic Sequence Databases,” 704.
41. Blattner, “Second Workshop,” 3 [GenBank papers].
42. National Institutes of Health, “Agenda: 3rd Workshop” [GenBank
papers].
43. Many internal NIH documents from this period reiterate the justifi ca-
tions for funding the database. In particular, see National Institutes of Health,
“Funding Plan” [JAL papers].
44. Jordan, “Request for Contract Action,” 1 [JAL papers].
45. As part of the Department of Energy, and consequently as an agent of
the government, Los Alamos was prohibited from competing directly for a fed-
eral contract from the NIH. The arrangement was that BBN became the prime
contractor, subcontracting the collection efforts to Goad's team. The double
bid from Los Alamos arose because, again as a government agent, the lab
could not be seen to be favoring one private fi rm over another and thus had to
agree to collaborate with multiple companies.
46. Smith, “History of the Genetic Sequence Databases,” 705.
47. Keller, Century of the Gene , 51-55.
48. The fi rst successful attempts to isolate the causative genes for specifi c
diseases were made in the 1980s. For example, in 1989, Francis Collins and
his co-workers successfully isolated a single point mutation that caused cystic
fi brosis. Rommens et al., “Identifi cation of the Cystic Fibrosis Gene.”
49. The work of Russell Doolittle provides an exemplar of this gene-
centric practice. In 1983, Doolittle, using his own customized protein sequence
database, discovered a surprising similarity between an oncogene and a growth
hormone. Doolittle's discovery has become a folkloric tale illustrating the