Sequencing the SARS Virus

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Biology Goes Boom

Before the 1990s, technology to collect large amounts of sequence information rapidly did not exist. The Human Genome Project (HGP) began in 1991, and by 1999 only 15% of the sequence had been collected. However, thanks to new methods, which were developed during the 1990s, the HGP turned sharply toward completion. By mid-2000, 90% of the human sequence was available, and currently the genome sequence essentially is complete. Data from sequencing projects like HGP is stored and publicly accessible through NCBI's Genbank.
During its first ten years of operation (1982–1992), Genbank collected just over 100MB of sequence in 80,000 records. During the next decade (1992–2002) Genbank's rate of growth skyrocketed, and the database grew to 29GB—ten times the size of the human genome—in 22 million records. Genbank receives on the order of 10,000 sequence records each day from sequencing labs across the world. One of these labs is the GSC, which on April 13, 2003, deposited the sequence of Tor2/SARS to Genbank.
To see how Linux was involved in the process leading to the submission of sequence gi:29826276, we need to go back to the beginning.

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Figure 9. Sequence Analysis on the Linux Desktop