Reading Nowak’s commentary was definitely helpful in understanding the Fleischmann article. The Fleischmann article was hard to understand because there was a lot of context I was missing (not to mention expertise in genome sequencing). For starters I have never talked about earlier methods of genome sequencing, so the descriptions of clone-by-clone sequencing and shotgun sequencing were too in depth for me to understand because I was not familiar with them. The context provided by the Nowark article was very helpful in understanding why this paper was such a big deal and what was going on at the time.
What stood out to me in the Nowak article was the contrast between the expectations for genome sequencing – that even bacterial genome sequencing would require millions of dollars and years to complete – versus the results of the Fleischmann article. Today, sequencing is routinely done, including entire metagenomes, and does not cost millions of dollars or take years. Reading the Nowak article was eye opening to how exciting shotgun sequencing was. Both articles point out that there is a lot to learn from the genome sequence. For example, the researchers found out that H. influenzae was missing three enzymes from the TCA cycle. Before sequencing its genome, it wasn’t known why H. influenzae required glutamate to culture, and after they found the answer.
Another expectation from the Fleischmann article which stood out to me was that shotgun sequencing could lead to the sequencing of the human genome, because other methods aren’t feasible for larger genomes. “Finally, this strategy has potential to facilitate the sequencing of the human genome.” This must have been very exciting at the time!
