2:30am, April 12, 2003. BC Cancer

...from Butterfield's first 'build', it's clear they're on track: one section is almost 6,000 base pairs long and another is 7,000 pair long. For the next five hours, they keep reloading. At 2:30 am, Butterfield hits the 'Eureka' moment. Build 28 comes back in one piece, right down to and including the tell-tale polytale - a long string of 'A's that always marks the end of a piece of messenger RNA.
               For the wet-lab crew, euphoria gives over to exhaustion. They file out to get some sleep. Butterfield keeps working--analyzing, verifying, comparing the completed sequence to others on file. When Stott comes back at 4 am, he startles Butterfield so badly, he is at risk of being impaled on the pen that Butterfield reflexively flings across the room.
                             - BC Business Sept. 2003

Thanks to technology and a spirit of global cooperation, the first genome of the virus that causes SARS was mapped by Canadian researchers in less than a week; soon after it was identified as a coronavirus.
                            - Newsweek Magazine  Apr. 2003

​Cracking the SARS Coronavirus Genome - April 2003


​The Genome Sequence of the SARS-Associated Coronavirus 
Science  30 May 2003

Complete SARS sequence and details
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/30271926

BC Team unravels SARS
The Province 2003

The Mystery of SARS
Newsweek

​Mission Impossible
​BC Business 2003

Linux journal article of the SARS sequencing
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6977

​SARS story (I think only time my photo is in a Chinese magazine)!
Ming Pao Saturday Magazine 2003 

The Province. April 13, 2003. Marco Marra (pointing), director of the Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre, and Yaron Butterfield, assistant coordinator for sequencing, were part of the SARS project at the B.C. Cancer Agency.

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Vancouver Sun. April 14, 2003. Marco Marra holding a DNA chip for the sequencing machine and Caroline Astell holding the sequencing coverage image (that I printed at 4am April 12!) - The Vancouver Sun.

I'm at my computer, followed by (R-L) Anca, Obi and Steve Jones, Bioinformatics Leader at BC Genome Sciences Centre

Saturday night, April 12, 2003, confirming we had the complete sequence. (L-R): Obi, Marco, Steve, Anca

Our Saturday morning snacks: pulp and no pulp orange juice, Tim Horton's bagels and Tim Bits...

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The wet lab crew... and me