On Apr. 14, 2003, researchers at Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Science Centre in Vancouver announced they had sequenced the 29,736-nucleotide genome of the SARS virus, an important step in the development of a potential treatment and vaccine.

Two days later, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published its own sequence, slightly shorter at 29,727 nucleotides but otherwise differing by only about ten base-pairs.

Dr. Steven Jones, head of bioinformatics at the Genome Sciences Centre led a team of researchers in assembling the genome from the sequence data. Dr. Jones says the virus detected appears to be a new type of coronavirus bearing only modest similarity to those coronaviruses previously characterized. “The next step for the Genome Sciences Centre is to analyze the proteins that the virus produces, to try and find clues for why this is such a virulent pathogen. With the public release of the sequence data, scientists around the world will also have an opportunity to contribute to this effort” explains Dr. Jones.