Scientific honor roll includes old genetic rivals

The leaders of competing efforts to decode the human genome were cited Thursday for presidential honors, almost a decade after the "genome race" ended in a tie.

Among the recipients of the National Medal of Science listed by the White House are Francis Collins, who led the government-organized Human Genome Project in the 1990s; and Craig Venter, who established a for-profit corporation called Celera Genomics to pioneer a "shotgun" approach to whole-genome sequencing.

Celera made rapid progress on the genome quest, sparking an acceleration in the publicly funded effort. Both groups ended up publishing their results in February 2001 — with the draft from the public project appearing in the journal Nature, and the draft from Celera appearing in Science.