Estonia Sees its Future in Genes

TARTU -- The gooey strip of DNA was visible underneath the halogen glow as Dagni Krinka tilted the tube of liquid back and forth under the light at a lab in this northernmost Baltic country.

''This is the part of the work I like best,'' Krinka, the head of the laboratory assigned the daunting task of collecting genetic samples from hundreds of thousands of Estonians in the coming years, told DW-WORLD. Then, gazing at the strip, she asked, ''Isn't it beautiful?''

It could be much more than beautiful. If this nation of 1.4 million succeeds in its ambitious goal to build one of the world's largest DNA databases, the stringy white gobs in Dagni's test tubes could push international drug development to a new level and bring international recognition to a country still playing catch up after decades of Soviet rule.

Databases that will attract pill-makers

Two years after American scientists mapped the human genome, the chemical building blocks that make up humanity's genetic heritage, Estonia is caught up in the race to build large DNA storage banks. In Iceland, the biotechnology company, Decode, has been mining genetic data from 80,000 of that country's population since 1999 and has found gene variations linked to heart disease and osteoporosis. Projects are also underway in Canada, the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

The goal of these various endeavors is to give scientists and pharmaceutical companies a big population of genetic material that they can scour for disease-causing genes, and use to test out the effectiveness of the medication we take when we get sick.

''It's a resource for basic science,'' said Andres Metspalu, a biotechnology professor at the University of Tartu in Estonia who began the Estonian Genome Project in 1999. ''But with good basic research, it can also lead to good economic benefits.''

Developing pills for Europeans, Americans

Money, scientific progress and international recognition are the three factors driving Estonia's plan forward. Since blood sampling began in October 2002, the nonprofit Estonian Genome Project Foundation has collected DNA from more than 3,000 Estonians. Aided by just $4.5 million in private investment, the project hopes to have 10,000 samples by the end of the year. Over the next six years, Estonian officials say, the number should be well into the hundreds of thousands at a cost of more than $100 million.

Estonia wants to turn its population into a gold mine.