Editing Celera Corporation (section)

==History==
Originally headquartered in [[Rockville, Maryland|Rockville]], [[Maryland]] (relocated to [[Alameda, California]]), it was established in May 1998 by PE Corporation (later renamed to [[Applera]]), with Dr. J. [[Craig Venter]] from [[The Institute for Genomic Research]] (TIGR) as its first president. While at TIGR, Venter and [[Hamilton O. Smith|Hamilton Smith]] led the first successful effort to [[sequencing|sequence]] an entire organism's [[genome]], that of the ''[[Haemophilus influenzae]]'' [[bacterium]]. Celera was formed for the purpose of generating and commercializing genomic information.  Its stock is a [[tracking stock]] of Applera, along with the tracking stock of Applera's larger [[Applied Biosystems]] Group business unit.

Celera sequenced the human genome at a fraction of the cost of the publicly funded [[Human Genome Project]] (HGP), using about $300 million of private funding versus approximately $3 billion of taxpayer dollars.{{citation needed|date=December 2022}} However, a significant portion of the human genome had already been sequenced when Celera entered the field, and thus Celera did not incur any costs with obtaining the existing data, which was freely available to the public from [[GenBank]]. Celera's approach, which used [[shotgun sequencing]], spurred the public HGP to accelerate its effort and shift its projected timetable from 2005 to 2003.{{Citation needed|date=January 2020}}

Critics of initial efforts by Celera Genomics to hold back data from sections of genome they sequenced for commercial exploitation felt that it would retard progress in science as a whole.  These critics pointed to the [[Open access (publishing)|open access]] policy for gene sequences from the publicly funded Human Genome Project.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Yamey |first1=G. |title=Dispute as rival groups publish details of human genome |journal=BMJ |date=17 February 2001 |volume=322 |issue=7283 |pages=381 |id={{Gale|A71350527}} {{ProQuest|1777608398}} |doi=10.1136/bmj.322.7283.381 |pmc=1119622 }}</ref> Later, the company changed their policy and made their sequences available for non-commercial use but set a maximum threshold for amount of sequence data that a researcher could download at any given time.{{Citation needed|date=January 2020}}

The rise and fall of Celera as an ambitious competitor of the Human Genome Project is the main subject of the book ''The Genome War'' by James Shreeve, who followed Venter around for two years in the process of writing the book. A view from the public effort's side is that of [[Nobel laureate]] Sir [[John Sulston]] in his book ''The Common Thread: A Story of Science, Politics, Ethics and the Human Genome''. Anthropologist [[Paul Rabinow]] also based his 2005 book ''A Machine to Make a Future'' on Celera.