Well, the plans have finally been released. The UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation (UKCMRI) will be built by 2015 on land just north of the British Library. And, by the beard of Mendel, it looks just like a giant chromosome.

The Centre will bring together 1250 scientists in a £520 million facility to work on human diseases. The buildings will form a new home for the National Institute for Medical Research (currently at Mill Hill) and Cancer Research UK (now in Lincoln’s Inn Fields). Those hundreds of researchers are going to be mixed up into a scientific melting pot of disciplines. Apparently, there will be no ‘traditional academic departments’, and researchers of all stripes can mingle together in the central atrium area.

Nature News has the full story. What I want to know: is this chromosome-shaped building just the first of an eventual 46?