The research world’s most famous human cell has had its genome
decoded, and it’s a mess. German researchers this week report
the genome sequence of the HeLa cell line, which originates from
a deadly cervical tumour taken from a patient named Henrietta
Lacks. Established after Lacks died in 1951, HeLa cells were the
first human cells to grow well in the laboratory. The cells have
contributed to more than 60,000 research papers, the development
of a polio vaccine in the 1950s and, most recently, an
international effort to characterize the genome, known as
ENCODE. Previous work showed that HeLa cells, like many tumours,
have bizarre, error-filled genomes, with one or more extra
copies of many chromosomes. To get a closer look at these
alterations, a team led by Lars Steinmetz, a geneticist at the
European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany,
sequenced the popular 'Kyoto' version of the cell line and
compared the sequence with that of a reference human genome. The
team's results are published in G