Table 1.

Summary of Principles Agreed Upon at the First International Strategy Meeting on Human Genome Sequencing (Bermuda, 25–28 February 1996) as reported by HUGO

The following principles were endorsed by all participants. These included officers from, and scientists supported by, the Wellcome Trust, the U.K. Medical Research Council, the NIH NCHGR (National Center for Human Genome Research), the DOE (U.S. Department of Energy), the German Human Genome Programme, the European Commission, HUGO (Human Genome Organisation), and the Human Genome Project of Japan. It was noted that some centres may find it difficult to implement these principles because of legal constraints and it was, therefore, important that funding agencies were urged to foster these policies

Primary genomic sequence should be in the public domain

It was agreed that all human genomic sequence information, generated by centres funded for large- scale human sequencing, should be freely available and in the public domain in order to encourage research and development and to maximise its benefit to society

Primary genomic sequence should be rapidly released

Sequence assemblies should be released as soon as possible; in some centres, assemblies of greater than 1 Kb would be released automatically on a daily basis

Finished annotated sequence should be submitted immediately to the public databases

It was agreed that these principles should apply for all human genomic sequence generated by large- scale sequencing centres, funded for the public good, in order to prevent such centres establishing a privileged position in the exploitation and control of human sequence information

Coordination

In order to promote coordination of activities, it was agreed that large-scale sequencing centres should inform HUGO of their intention to sequence particular regions of the genome. HUGO would present this information on their World Wide Web page and direct users to the Web pages of individual centres for more detailed information regarding the current status of sequencing in specific regions. This mechanism should enable centres to declare their intentions in a general framework while also allowing more detailed interrogation at the local level