The Livermore high-speed cell sorter was developed between 1985 and 1992. The sorter expedites studies of human chromosomes by reducing the time needed for accurate sorting from one or two weeks to one or two days. As a joint member with Los Alamos National Laboratory for the National Laboratory Gene Library Project, the Lab is producing chromosome-specific gene libraries and distributing them worldwide to the scientific community.
In 1987, Livermore biomedical researchers began studying human chromosome 19. At the same time, Los Alamos began work on chromosome 16 and Lawrence Berkeley was considering decoding chromosome 5. DOE became the first federal agency by launching its Human Genome Initiative. This decision was endorsed in an April 1987 report by a DOE Committee, which note that DOE was particularly well-suited for the task because of the demonstrated expertise in managing complex, long-term, multidisciplinary projects.
In 1990, DOE joined with the National Institutes of Health and other laboratories around the world to kick off the Human Genome Project, the largest biological research project ever undertaken. Thanks to the commercial development of automated, high-throughput sequencing machines, a rough draft of the sequence of the entire 5 billion base pairs our DNA—all 23 chromosomes—was completed in 2001, several years ahead of schedule. Lawrence Livermore, Lawrence Berkeley, and Los Alamos combined efforts in the DOE’s Joint Genome Institute and sequenced three of the chromosomes (5, 16, and 19).
