Greens fight genes project

A SCIENTIFIC project dedicated to the very essence of human life wants to expand its research centre in an area of outstanding countryside - provoking a clash between two vital national interests.

The pounds 100m development proposed by the Wellcome Trust, the UK's biggest independent funder of scientific research, would house a commercial wing to complement the academic research of the Human Genome Project at Hinxton Hall near Cambridge.

The expansion would take up 40,000sq m of farmland and create 1,000 jobs. The Wellcome Trust told a recent public inquiry into the proposal that its scientists needed to be on the same campus as businesses that can develop and market its discoveries. It argued that this would mean that academic research led to improvements in healthcare as rapidly as possible.

However, environmental groups and the local authority oppose the development, fearing that it would irrevocably change the landscape south of Cambridge. The region around the village of Hinxton has a high agricultural value and is defined as an Area of Best Landscape, located in a river valley and rising hills that lead to the chalk downs of Essex. Opponents say there is already ample office space and housing for new employees north of the city.

There is a political dimension to the debate. Peter Mandelson, the new Trade and Industry Secretary, has said that science will be the priority of his department. This suggests uneasy relations with John Prescott, who heads the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, and who has already been been criticised for allowing new housing on green- belt sites in Hertfordshire and West Sussex. It is Mr Prescott who will have to rule on the public inquiry.

The Wellcome Trust's campus at the 18th century manor house of Hinxton Hall is devoted to the Human Genome Project, the race to decode and understand the function of all the genes in our DNA, the code of life or genome. Among its aims are the eradication of genetically based disease and one of the most ambitious targets of the campus is the sequencing of one- third of the human genome. It is expected that this archive will provide the cornerstone of medicine in the next century.