Scientists sign up to view book of life

British universities are to seal six-figure deals with Celera, the commercial rival of the public Human Genome Project, to give their scientists access to the company's genetic databases.

The names of the institutions involved, which may include at least one consortium, have not been released, but the first two subscriptions should be finalised this week.

Celera, which last week published a full sequence of the human genome a day after the HGP, claims to be negotiating similar deals with other European institutions and several British government agencies.

Although Celera's academic subscription rate is far lower than its rate for commercial firms, which pay between $5-15 million, the cost is not insignificant. The  minimum academic subscription is for ten named users at an annual charge of $15,000 each for three years.

John Lewis, Celera's academic sales director, said subscription would give scientists access to the genetic book of human life, which draws on both Celera's and the HGP's sequencing efforts, with 26,000 genes identified and referenced to those proteins known to be linked to each one.

Mr Lewis said that deals with Celera would not tie scientists to the company: "Academic researchers are free to exploit what they find, as long as the value remains with the university investigator."

Celera's academic subscribers in the United States include Yale, Harvard and Vanderbilt universities. The Australian government has brokered a national deal and the Max Planck Society in Germany is among European organisations that have signed up.