All language subtitles for Cracking.The.Code.S01E08.720p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-Kitsune.[eng]

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] Humanity's
greatest uncracked code.

- The human genome is
the instruction book

for how humans are formed.

- [Narrator] Unlocking
the key to life

will not only be a race against
time, but also big business.

- The human genome sequence

is the common
inheritance of mankind

and nobody should own it.

- And that's not how
science should work.

- [Narrator] Science will
be pushed to its limits.

- The challenge
involved is immense.

It's akin to putting the
first person on the moon.

- Nobody knew whether
the algorithms

or the computational power
would be able to do it.

- [Narrator] But
cracking the human code

will ultimately transform
our understanding of life.

- This has been 4 billion
years in the making,

and here I am the first
human ever to see this bit.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] These are the
codes that changed our world.

Bizarre markings, random
letters and numbers,

words that make no sense.

But cracking them
unlocks military secrets,

decodes ancient civilizations,

and reveals enemies
in our midst.

[dramatic music]

Now we uncover how
they were decoded,

the genius minds that broke them

and the secrets they revealed.

[dramatic music]

- Every organism has a genome.

It has its own code,

and it's that code
that is the program

to let you go from a one
celled egg, into a fetus,

[baby crying]

to a baby, then to develop.

It is the combination
of all those genes,

doing all those things
that makes us who we are.

- [Narrator] The human
genome, our code of life,

defines what we look like.

- I've got white hair
now because of my genes.

I used to have red hair
and that was also my genes.

- [Narrator] It tells us
where we've come from.

- As humans, we contain
Neanderthal gene sequences.

There's a bit of
Neanderthal in all of us.

- [Narrator] And shapes
where we're going.

- A person can have a
mutation in one gene

that gives them a
higher risk of disease.

- [Narrator] And this code

can be found inside
every cell in our bodies.

- The genome actually stretches
out for a couple meters

and yet it's amazingly small.

It's so skinny,

it's somewhere around a
hundredth of the diameter

of a human hair.

You can't even see the
cells on your skin,

but each one of those has
a genome all wrapped up,

packed together in
the nucleus inside it.

- [Narrator] In the
late 20th century,

unlocking the human code
becomes the holy grail

for molecular scientists.

If they can unravel
how human DNA works,

they will not only reveal
what makes us who we are,

but also why things go wrong.

And even how they might be
prevented in the first place.

- Cracking the code
of the human genome

is probably the single
most important avenue

to understanding the
biological nature of humanity.

So much hinges on this;

From important
archeological evidence

to helping us live
longer healthier lives,

to tackling some
of mankind's worst

and most persistent diseases.

[pensive music]

[birds chirping]

- [Narrator] The quest to crack

humanity's most important code

started over 150 years ago

in the vegetable garden
of Czech monastery,

where Gregor Mendel,

an Austrian university
dropout turned monk

developed an all consuming
fascination with plants.

- He carried out,

in a way that seems
to be fairly unrelated

to normal monk duties,

a huge set of experiments

working with pea
plants in the gardens.

Mendel demonstrated something
incredibly fundamental

that we hadn't really
understood before.

[pensive music]

- [Narrator] Mendel was puzzled

by the concept of
family resemblances.

- Everyone was very comfortable

with the idea that
somehow or other

we resembled our parents.

You only have to look
at some of the portraits

of some of the Royal families
from the European communities

to see those features
ran in families.

But nobody knew how,

it was just thought we
sort of somehow just did.

- [Narrator] Over seven years,

Mendel grew and studied
28,000 pea plants,

carefully recording the
shape, size and color

of their flowers,
seeds and seed pods,

even their height.

- Mendel was able to show

that whether or not
the pea passed on

being wrinkly or smooth
had nothing to do

with whether the pea passed
on whether it was tall

or whether it was short.

What that demonstrated
was that we as organisms

pass on separate bits of
inheritance as discrete units.

In human terms that's a bit
like realizing that for example,

you could inherit your
mother's nose shape,

but you could inherit
your father's ear shape.

It showed that they
weren't all connected.

- [Narrator] Mendel concluded

that these discrete
units of information

dictate what we inherit.

[pensive music]

Over the following century,

scientists discovered these
units are in fact genes.

They operate inside the
nucleus of every cell.

And they're a combination

of just four chemical
building blocks

known as nucleotides or bases.

They are adenine, cytosine,
guanine, and thymine,

or simply A, C, G and T.

- It's so simple and
yet it gives rise

to the amazing
organisms, which are us.

- [Narrator] The human genome
consists of these four letters

repeated 3 billion times.

During the first half
of the 20th century,

scientists begin to suspect

the order in which
they're arranged,

dictates how the code creates
each and every one of us,

from the color of our eyes to
aspects of our personality.

But they've no idea how
the letters are arranged.

Until 1953, when the
patrons of a Cambridge pub

were disturbed by two
young molecular biologists

declaring they'd found
the secret of life.

The pub regulars had no
idea of what that would mean

for both science and humanity.

The two scientists,
American James Watson

and Briton Francis Crick,
had made a discovery

that would revolutionize
the understanding

of human genetics.

They had worked out
the structure of DNA

or deoxyribonucleic acid.

For the first time
they understood

how the four letters,
A, C, G and T

were placed in the now
iconic helical structure.

- When Watson and
Crick figured out

what the structure of DNA was,

it became clear that the
letters weren't just a jumble,

they actually had
a specific order.

And that order has information,
it's like computer code.

You know, you have a
string of zeros and ones

in computer code, and it's the
order of those zeros and ones

that have the information.

Nucleic acids are
simply the letters,

they contain the information.

Instead of a binary code
it's a four letter code.

- [Narrator] Watson and
Crick's groundbreaking work

might have finally unlocked
the structure of DNA.

But cracking its code

and working out
which combination

of As, Cs, Gs and Ts pass
on which characteristics

was a whole different ballgame.

- By the 70s we knew the
helical structure of DNA,

we knew that four bases

carried the genetic
code essentially.

The problem was we
didn't have a method

to read the letters.

- [Narrator] Scientists had
discovered the book of life,

but they still couldn't read it.

[upbeat music]

As news spread of Watson and
Crick's incredible discovery,

another Cambridge
based scientist

was about to turbo boost the
quest to decode human DNA.

Brilliant biochemist,
Fred Sanger,

already a Nobel prize
winner in chemistry

for his work on the
structure of proteins,

begins to look into the problem
of reading the code of life.

But he doesn't start
with human DNA,

his genius is to solve this
huge puzzle by thinking small.

- Most of us when we think of
something that's fairly small,

we might think
about a bacterium,

if we're thinking about
something with its own DNA.

But Fred Sanger
thought even smaller.

- This is phiX174, a virus
so small it infects bacteria.

The DNA of this
so-called bacteria phage

is made of just 5400 of the
four nucleotides A, C, G and T.

- The advantage of using
something like a bacteria phage

is that its genome is very small

and also you can grow lots of
the bacteria phage in the lab,

so you can get lots and lots
and lots of the DNA to work on

and it will all be
exactly the same DNA.

And that was the
real breakthrough.

[pensive music]

- [Narrator] Sanger
duplicates the bacteria's DNA,

but uses a chemical

which stops the replication
process randomly

when a specific one of the
four nucleotides occurs.

For example adenine,

that gives him lots of
different lengths of DNA,

each ending in an A
that he can compare.

He then uses a process
called electrophoresis,

which separates out each
of the strands of DNA

by dragging them through a gel.

- Gel is just a structure
that slows down molecules

when you pass an electric
current across it.

And the ones that are very
small will move really fast,

and the ones that are very big
will move much more slowly.

So they're all separated
based on their length.

- [Narrator] None
of this process

is visible to the naked eye,

so a photographic film
is placed over the gel.

X-ray photography illuminates
radioactive markers

placed on the end
of each fragment,

revealing the positions
of all the A nucleotides

in the strand of DNA.

The process is then repeated

for the remaining three
nucleotides, C, G and T.

Finally, the letters
can be put together

and the complete sequence
of DNA can be read.

[dramatic music]

But this is just one tiny
fragment of the viral genome.

So Sanger repeats the
process over and over again.

- The challenge was
then how could he piece

these different
fragments of DNA together

to get back to the
sequence of the genome.

- [Narrator] Sanger decides
to look for overlaps

between the sequence sections.

He uses a technique common
to other code breakers,

sliding the code around
until he finds a match.

- So that you'd get to
the end of one region

and the start of another,

and you could see
where they overlapped

and then you could line
them up against each other.

- [Narrator] It's
painstaking work

fraught with difficulties
due to large numbers

of identical,
repetitive sequences,

and the small size
of the fragments.

But after 17 long years,

in 1977 Sanger finally
cracks the code.

- These two pieces

must have actually come
from a similar page,

they have the same text
in them, they share text.

- [Narrator] The entire
genome of the tiny virus

can now be read in full.

- Fred Sanger showed
that you could find out

the entire genetic
sequence of an organism.

So that was the first time
that was ever really done.

That was an extraordinary
achievement.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] The invention
of genetic sequencing

wins Sanger his
second Nobel prize.

The Sanger technique
is a game changer.

Science now has the tool needed

to crack the human genetic code.

[bright upbeat music]

By the late 1980s, scientific
advances had made it possible

to read up to 500 DNA
letters at a time.

But it's still a very long way

from reading the 3 billion bases

that make up the human genome.

- We were just beginning

to be able to decode
the letters of DNA,

but it was on a scale
that was minuscule

compared to the scale that would
be required for the genome.

- There was considerable
skepticism amongst scientists

that this was something worthy

of being called a
scientific project.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] But at
a lab in St. Louis

one scientist is edging closer

to realizing the
impossible dream.

Bob Waterston is
analyzing the genome

of a tiny parasitic worm,

with more than 37,000
times more bases

than Fred Sanger's
bacteria phage.

- In the 80s I was starting
to work on the map of a worm.

We could see that what we
were doing with the worm

would work on humans.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] Waterston
is one of a small

but growing number of scientists

beginning to suspect
the impossible dream

of decoding the human genome
might soon be possible.

[dramatic music]

The problem is it will take a
vast amount of time and money.

- When it was first
broached to a fair fraction

of the biological community,
it just seemed madness.

- There were a lot of questions.

It was going to be big, but it
was gonna consume the money.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] Fortunately,
there's one investor

with the vision to realize
the potential benefits

of decoding the human genome,

and has the deep
pockets to fund it.

[dramatic music]

The US government.

On October 1st, 1990,
Congress puts up $3 billion

to fund the most ambitious

biological research
project in history,

decoding the entire
human genome.

- It was going to be big.

Inside the molecular
biology community

there was a great
deal of excitement

about what could happen,

but also the feeling that
the goal was a long way away.

- [Narrator] It's
a vast project,

but the money will
fund an international
effort for 15 years

Scientists in the US, UK, Japan,
France, Germany, and China

are now all working together
to try to crack the human code.

- The human genome is
everybody's heritage,

and I think it was crucial

to have representatives from
different parts of the world

involved in this project so
that it became humanity's genome

- [Narrator] In America

the work is spearheaded
by James Watson,

one half of Crick and Watson,

and biologist, Bob Waterston.

In Britain, Nobel prize winner
and biologist, John Sulston

is also putting
together a crack team.

By chance he meets sequencing
specialist, Jane Rogers.

- I was working in London.

I had a young family at the time

and I'd asked the
medical research council

if there were any
posts in Cambridge,

rather than commuting
into London.

- [Narrator] Sulston is
putting together a proposal

for a state of the
art research facility

dedicated to unlocking
the human genome.

- And after a couple of glasses

of Sherry on an empty stomach,

he felt that I was a very
suitable candidate for the job,

and we put the
proposal together.

- [Narrator] In 1992 on
the outskirts of Cambridge,

The Sanger Center,

named in honor of the
father of DNA sequencing,

opens its doors.

[dramatic music]

- [Announcer] In the
grounds of Hinxton Hall,

the new Wellcome Trust genome
campus has been created.

- And at that point, we
did look at each other

and say, "Oh, now
we've got to do it."

- [Announcer] The Sanger Center
is currently being scaled up

and the human genome
sequencing project,

a vast global initiative,

is scheduled to be
completed by the year 2005.

- [Narrator] The
Human Genome Project

has world class facilities,

and the world's best
molecular biologists.

But there's one major problem;

- We could only see
500 letters at a time,

and that's being generous.

Maybe it was closer to
300 when we started.

- At the time that this
project starts in development,

we don't even think
we have the technology

to make it capable.

It is an enormous undertaking.

- [Narrator] And it's not
just the sequencing technology

that isn't up to the job.

Basic computing power is
nowhere near what's needed

for the task ahead.

- Personal computers
were a very new thing.

I can remember having a
little old box, Apple,

and that was the most
modern technology.

And I don't know
what its power was

but it was a fraction of
what you find in a computer

or an iPhone today.

- I had a little IBM
PC on my desktop,

you know, I have more
computing power in my watch.

But we knew what we
were doing at the start

was not gonna be good
enough to get the job done.

- [Narrator] But
Waterston, Rogers

and the rest of the
international team

know the stakes are now
so high, they can't stop.

They can only hope
advances in technology

will come to their rescue.

[dramatic music]

- People knew that the genome
was the information behind us,

and if we could understand
that we could manipulate it.

We could change it to keep
people from having disease,

we could begin to think about
how biology actually works,

and could we redesign things.

- [Narrator] Knowing their work

could impact every aspect
of human existence,

the scientists set to work.

Their first job
is to create a map

to help navigate through
the human genome.

- The genome is amazingly
complex and hard to work with.

It's like looking down at
the earth from a satellite.

It's there but you
can't see any details.

So what people wanted to do
was put markers, landmarks.

- [Narrator] The teams
hunt for these landmarks

by comparing small
sections of DNA

from multiple
individual samples.

When a section of
one strand of DNA

is different to another sample,
which should be identical,

it's a sign there may
be something significant

in that region of
the human genome.

This landmark can then be
plotted in relation to others,

creating a map of potentially
interesting locations.

[dramatic music]

The teams begin to
join up the dots,

but with multiple laboratories

working across 3 billion bases,

it quickly becomes clear each
team needs a specific aim.

- Our lab had actually sequenced

the same exact piece of DNA
that another lab had sequenced.

We didn't know it.

It was like having a car crash

out in the middle of the desert.

We've got the whole
human genome to sequence

and here we are running
into each other.

And so we had to figure out
how to share things equitably.

[upbeat music]

- [Narrator] Conveniently,

the human genome is already
subdivided into smaller strands

inside every cell.

These are chromosomes, each
cell contains 23 pairs.

They keep the DNA tightly woven

and play a critical role
in ensuring DNA is copied

and distributed correctly
during cell division.

- Chromosomes are
relatively simple to isolate

in a pretty pure form,

so you can work
on chromosome one

or chromosome two and so on.

- [Narrator] The Human Genome
Project's international teams

share out the chromosomes.

This helps to
streamline the workflow,

but it doesn't reduce
the amount of work,

because each chromosome still
has hundreds of millions

of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts,

all of which need
to be identified.

And the clock is ticking.

They have just 15
years of funding

to crack the code of human life.

[dramatic music]

Cracking the entire
genome in just 15 years

is impossibly fast
in science terms.

So the team is forced to come up

with a new and faster
way of working.

- It was much more effective

if each individual
was only responsible

for a small part of the process,

they only had to
learn a little bit

and become really expert
at that one little bit.

This is changing it into really
an assembly line process,

where somebody's responsible
for putting the doors on

and somebody else is
putting the seats in.

- [Narrator] And this
new way of working

requires a new
kind of workforce.

- Very often we were advertising
in the local newspapers

for people with
technical skills,

and people who had skills
in needle work, embroidery,

'cause they had good eyesight

or, and good hand-eye
coordination.

Or people who were good
at hacking computers

were, you know,
often top of our list

for people who were excellent
candidates for this.

- [Narrator] But not all of the
human genome team are human.

To the bemusement of some,

robots take on jobs once handled

by highly trained scientists.

- Many biologists at the
time this was going on

felt that this was not
something they wanted to do,

this was not real science,
this was technology.

Eventually this was a fully
industrialized process

like building a car.

- [Narrator] For those
now on the front line

of this new brand of science,
their work is trailblazing.

- Every once in a while,

I'd be looking at my computer

and I'd look at the string
of As, Gs, Cs and Ts

that we just discovered
for this part of the genome

and I couldn't help but
think, you know, wow.

This has been 4 billion
years in the making,

and here I am, the first
human ever to see this bit.

There was this sense, this
is what we need to know,

and here I am, I'm seeing
this for the first time.

- [Narrator] Letter by
pain staking letter,

the human genome team is
revealing the code of life.

The specific combinations
of As, Cs, Gs and Ts

that together make up our
genes and make us who we are.

[dramatic music]

By 1994, four years
into the project,

15,000 genes had been
identified on the human genome.

And two years after that,

the team has started to
pinpoint mutated genes

responsible for life
threatening diseases

passed down from
generation to generation.

- There had been a number
of genetic diseases

identified by that point,

but we didn't know the
molecular biology behind them.

We didn't know the molecules.

In a few months time,

we had the DNA for
polycystic kidney disease,

and now the people studying
polycystic kidney disease

could begin to understand

how polycystic kidney
disease came about.

- [Narrator] In 1996,

the team identifies and locates

the genes for Parkinson's
disease and for prostate cancer.

This breakthrough
is the first step

in allowing scientists to
screen for these diseases,

potentially even eliminating
them altogether in the future.

But despite these successes,

the international
team of scientists

has unraveled less than 1%
of the 3 billion letter code.

[dramatic music]

They're approaching the
halfway point in the project

and there's still 99% of
the code left to crack.

[dramatic music]

The team urgently needs
to pick up the pace,

but something is
slowing them down.

The scientific process itself.

- When you are a research
scientist, you generate data.

You repeat the
experiment three times

and it's only once
you've crosschecked,

you know, weeks
or years of data,

you then write it up, publish.

- So we could have the sequence

that might be usable for
somebody studying a human gene,

and it might be a
year or two years

before that sequence actually

would have been in
the public domain

for people to be able
to use the sequence.

- [Narrator] This slow
and secretive process

is a major problem for
the Human Genome Project.

- Usually cracking a code,
you want to keep it secret.

You know, if you crack it

you don't want whoever's
code you're cracking

to find out about it.

With the genome, it's
the opposite problem.

You need everyone
working in tandem

or the whole thing
becomes inefficient.

Inefficiency means more
expense, means more time.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] But time is
something the team doesn't have.

[dramatic music]

The solution to cracking
the human code more quickly

is found in an unlikely place.

The small island of Bermuda.

Better known as a paradise
holiday destination,

in 1996 it's the
unusual location

for a revolutionary meeting

that will change scientific
research forever.

- If it was in Washington, the
US would hold too much sway,

it would be on our home turf.

And they didn't think they'd
get good enough participation

if they held it
somewhere in Europe.

So they found a place that was
in the middle of the ocean.

- Michael Morgan, the head
of the Human Genome Project

for Britain's Wellcome Trust,

has a plan for speeding
up the project's progress,

but it goes against everything

the scientific
community believes in.

So he's invited the project's
top scientists to Bermuda

in the hope of persuading them

to share their precious
unpublished research

with the entire
scientific community.

- If you had two kilo
bases of sequence data,

which is a tiny amount
by modern standards,

you would put it on the internet

with no restrictions on its use.

[dramatic music]

- It was very unusual
to release data

and have no idea what
would happen to it,

because once it's in
the public data sources,

anyone can use it

and you can't control what
other people do with it.

- If we're going to make
progress on understanding it,

everybody had to be able
to work on it freely.

You need the whole thing and
you need free access to it.

- At the end of the discussion,
I called for a show of hands

of support for these principles.

And I was unaware of anybody
not raising their hand.

[enchanting music]

- [Narrator] The
multinational team

reaches a revolutionary
agreement.

- It was agreed that data would
be released on a daily basis

with no restrictions on its use,

the so-called
Bermuda Principles.

- We would share the
sequence information

as we were generating it,

and it would actually serve
as a resource for the world.

- The human genome team
believes collaboration

is the key to solving
the code of DNA.

But not everyone abides
by the principles

and the future of
the entire project

is about to be put in danger.

[dramatic music]

Eight years into the project,

with time and money running out,

Michael Morgan receives
some alarming news.

[dramatic music]

- There was going to
be a major announcement

of a new sequencing effort

funded by commercial
entities in the states

that would have a major
impact on the genome project.

- [Narrator] A biotech
company called Celera,

plans to take a radically
different approach

to cracking the human code.

- It was a very sexy model

because it involved
fancy bioinformatics,
lots of computing,

techniques that really
hadn't been done before.

It was exciting.

- [Narrator] The technique
is less accurate,

but also potentially
faster and cheaper.

And that makes it a major threat

to the funding from
the US government.

- In the US, the government
is supposed to fund

things that companies
are not likely to do.

And so there was a worry that
Congress would pull the plug.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] Without the Human
Genome Project on the scene,

Celera would be free to
do exactly what it wants

with the code of life.

And what it wants
is to make money.

- Part of the model of Celera

was to encourage companies
to buy a subscription

so that they would have first
look of the sequence data.

And a number of major
pharmaceutical companies

had signed up to this.

- And so people would
pay to get access to it,

and that's not how
science should work.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] Access to the
code for individual genes

would be sold to
the highest bidder.

- But you couldn't
share it with others,

and you were supposed
to inform Celera

of any discoveries
you made about it.

- [Narrator] If Celera's faster

and cheaper sequencing wins out,

it means a private
company would in effect

own the human genome.

- They wanted to be
the world's resource

for information about genomes,

and that's how they were
gonna make money out of it.

[pensive music]

- [Narrator] To the
scientists and administrators

of the Human Genome Project,

Celera's plan represents
a major threat,

not just to the project, but
to the code of life itself.

- The genome is
a basic resource.

It's something that is
rich in information,

but will take really
concerted effort

to understand what's going on
with each piece of the genome.

The way science works is that
people play off one another.

You have to have interactions.

I felt like we had
to maintain an effort

that would lead to a path where
the sequence was available

without constraint to the world.

- The human genome sequence

is the common
inheritance of mankind

and nobody, nobody
should own it.

It should be available
for everybody to work on

so that the benefits
go to everybody.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] On
March 12th, 1998,

less than a week after
Celera's shock announcement,

a conference on the
human genome begins

at James Watson's Cold
Spring Harbor laboratory

on Long Island.

- [Jane] The mood was
extremely anxious.

- There was a fair
amount of despair.

A lot of people were
down at the mouth.

- What should we do?

How can we take this forward?

- There was just all kinds
of politics floating around

and how to tactically respond.

Did we just continue with
the way we were doing things?

Did we have to shift?

And so there was a
lot of uncertainty,

there was just a lot of anxiety.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] Then on the
last day of the conference,

there's a surprise
guest speaker,

and he may be the salvation,
not only of the project,

but of humanity
owning its own code.

- I walked into the auditorium,

not only was there
not a seat available,

but every corridor
and passageway was
crammed with people.

I hadn't seen anything
like it before.

It was quite a moment.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] Once again,

Michael Morgan may have the
solution to the problem.

- I was very aware
that what I said

was going to have
an important impact.

- [Narrator] As the
Wellcome Trust's

Director of molecular research,

Morgan has access to
a vast cash resource,

because clever investments
have made the charity rich.

- The Wellcome trust was
likened by a colleague,

to an 800 pound gorilla

that could pretty much do
whatever it wanted to do

and what it chose to do.

Our value at that time

would've been in the
2 to 3, 4 billion.

- [Narrator] What the
audience wants to know

is where this scientific gorilla

is going to throw its weight.

- I made a presentation

and basically said
that the Wellcome Trust

would not stand by and allow
this private organization

to sequence the human genome,

and if necessary we'd
fund the whole thing.

[audience applauds]

- And the crowd just erupted.

- [Narrator] It's a
bombshell announcement.

If the US government
pulls the plug

on the Human Genome Project,

the Wellcome Trust will
step in and pick up the tab.

If all the other funding bodies
around the world pull out,

the Wellcome Trust will
pick up their tabs too.

- Nobody in the audience
was left in doubt

that we would be
able and were able

to fulfill our commitment to
fund the whole genome project.

- He was very, very pugnacious,

very upfront about
taking on this challenge.

- There had been a threat
to the Human Genome Project,

but there was a knight on
a white horse basically

who was stepping in and
coming to the rescue.

[Michael chuckles]

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] The Wellcome Trust

has secured the future of
the Human Genome Project,

but the threat of big business
stealing their thunder

is still very real.

- There was definitely a race

as far as the media
was concerned.

And there was definitely a race

as far as the scientists
who were directly involved

in either Celera or the Human
Genome Project were concerned.

- We, I think were portrayed

as being the, you know,
old fashioned luddites

plotting through
the same old stuff,

and that was so
difficult to counter.

I mean, if I try and tell
somebody from the press

that the Celera approach
isn't guaranteed success,

whereas we can get to
the end eventually,

it makes us sound boring.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] Despite
the negative publicity,

in November, 1999, the
Human Genome Project team

successfully reads
its billionth letter.

Just a month later,

they announced the
completion of the sequencing

of the first whole
chromosome, chromosome 22.

- It was a big deal,

everybody felt they
had achieved something.

Everybody felt part of it,
and that this was something

that they were
very, very proud of.

- [Narrator] But this is
more than just a milestone

in the race to crack
the code of life.

Chromosome 22 carries genes
linked to schizophrenia,

leukemia, heart
disease, breast cancer,

and a host of other
diseases and conditions.

- We knew that we
could use that sequence

to help us identify those
kinds of rare conditions.

And we would never be
able to find those out

unless we knew

what a normal human genome
sequence looked like.

- [Narrator] This
major breakthrough

is a shot in the arm for
the human genome team,

and in the weeks and
months following it,

the rate of discovery
gets faster and faster.

Just four months
later in April, 2000,

the team successfully reads
their 2 billionth letter.

- We certainly didn't think
we could do it in 1990

when we started out, but we
just kept getting better,

and the technology just
kept getting better.

And that incremental change
just led us to be confident

that we could do it.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] Meanwhile
Celera continues

with its own sequencing plan,

but the company plays its cards

and its data very
close to its chest.

- We were up against it

because Celera
had press releases

that made it look like
it was miles ahead

of anything that the
public effort was doing.

- So nobody in the public domain

could see the Celera data, but
our data was freely available

in the public databases
for them to see.

- [Narrator] Tensions
are mounting and
tempers are fraying.

- Sometimes the
press got unpleasant

and it wasn't doing
science any good.

It didn't portray science in
a good light to the public.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] The public rivalry

has caught the attention of
US President, Bill Clinton.

- By March, 2000,
Clinton wrote a note

to his science advisor,
telling him to fix this.

- [Narrator] The result
of this intervention

is an historic agreement.

On June 26th, 2000,

[audience applauds]

President, Bill Clinton and
UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair,

bring the two waring
sides together

to formally announce
to the world

that the first draft of the
human genome is complete.

- The announcement of
draft genome sequence

was something of a compromise.

There was sequence covering
over 99% of the human genome,

but the quality was
not at the standard

that we were aiming for.

- We were in the east
room of the White House

and there was Bill Clinton.

- I congratulate all of you

on this stunning and
humbling achievement.

- Clinton talked about
a map for humankind

and how wonderful it was.

- Today we are
learning the language

in which God created life.

- It was pretty smutty, but
it was also pretty amazing.

- [Narrator] But
what every member

of the human genome team
really wants to know

is how much of the human
code their biotech rival

has really cracked.

- [Waterston] We still didn't
know what Celera had produced.

- We are announcing
today for the first time,

our species can read
the chemical letters

of its genetic code.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] After
months of speculation,

the truth is about
to be revealed.

Part of the agreement
is that the two sides

will publish their
results simultaneously.

Bob Waterston and the rest
of the human genome team

will finally get to
see just how much

of the human genome code
Celera has unraveled.

- And frankly, I was elated.

We had about the same quality
sequence, it really was a tie.

So that was really
excellent news.

- [Narrator] In real terms,

it's a win for the
Human Genome Project.

With the teams neck and neck

pharmaceutical companies
are unwilling to pay

for Celera's sequence data

when they can get it from the
Human Genome Project for free.

- It was the nail in the coffin

for Celera's ambitions
to make a lot of money.

[pensive music]

- [Narrator] Over
the following months,

Celera quietly
abandons its plans

for a private library
of humanity's code.

It now falls to the
publicly funded team

to fill in the
last remaining gaps

and complete the code
once and for all.

In April, 2003, 13 years
after the project began,

the human genome team finally
publishes the code of life

they've worked
tirelessly to decode.

But it takes until March, 2022

for every last one of
the 3 billion letters

to be fully sequenced.

- It was a lot of
work, long days,

challenging me in ways that
I certainly didn't expect

to be challenged when I
started out in this career.

- It was enormously
exciting at the time.

I had to do things
that I never dreamed

that I would ever have to do.

- Despite all the challenges,
despite the dark times,

we were confident we
could get it done.

And we did.

[bright upbeat music]

- [Narrator] The entire code
of life is posted online,

available to all for free.

- It's just available
to anybody and everybody

across the world
without constraint.

- That my mom could
have looked up

the human genome sequence,

I think that was fantastic.

That was really the point

at which I realized

how much this was going
to change biology.

And we came to a conclusion
that has been transformative.

I am very proud that
I was part of it.

- [Narrator] Cracking
the human genome code

has revolutionized science.

It now offers scientists
a new and decisive weapon

in the fight against
disease, including cancer.

- What's been
enormously gratifying

was to see how genome sequence

has enabled the science of
biology to go in new directions,

to go at a speed and precision

that I just didn't
see it 20 years ago.

- Now we can actually compare
sequences of cancer cells

from an individual

with the sequences
of normal cells

and pinpoint where
the problems are.

[siren wailing]

- The human genome
makes it so much easier

to show people who are
the perpetrators of crime,

or you could argue
more importantly,

exonerating people who
had been imprisoned

before DNA evidence
became available.

- [Narrator] Unlocking
the human code

has enlightened our past.

- We can extract DNA
from ancient humans,

such as Neanderthals
tools or Denisovans,

and we can start to
understand where we fit in

to the wider human family.

- [Narrator] And it's
helping to secure

the future of humanity.

- Look at how we've dealt with
the recent COVID 19 outbreak.

Without the
sequencing technology,

we would be completely
struggling and in the dark.

So many benefits, and
many, many more to come.

- It's now directly affecting
people's lives for the better.

That's a fantastic achievement.

- [Narrator] It took
thousands of scientists

over a decade of intense work
to decode the human genome.

But today it can be done
in a matter of hours.

Now, thanks to Mendel's peas,

Watson and Crick's
research, Sanger sequencing,

and the extraordinary ingenuity

and persistence of the
Human Genome Project,

we can see the complete picture
and read the code of life.

- The human genome
is spectacular.

It's an amazing code.

[bright upbeat music]