Craig Venter
From Freepedia
John Craig Venter (born October 14, 1946, Salt Lake City) is an American biologist and businessman. He began his academic career at a community college, College of San Mateo (California),after enlisting in the navy and serving a tour of duty during the Vietnam War. On returning, he received his bachelor's degree in biochemistry in 1972, and his Ph.D. in physiology and pharmacology in 1975, both from the University of California, San Diego. After working at the State University of New York at Buffalo, he joined the National Institutes of Health in 1984.
While at NIH, Venter learned of a technique for rapidly identifying all of the mRNAs present in a cell, and began to use it to rapidly identify human brain genes. The short cDNA sequence fragments discovered by this method are called Expressed sequence tags, or ESTs, a name coined by Anthony Kerlavage at The Institute for Genomic Research. In a controversial court case, Venter tried to patent these gene fragments, but lost the case.
He was the former president and founder of Celera Genomics, which became infamous for running a Human Genome Project of its own for commercial purposes, using shotgun sequencing technology in 1999. DNA from 5 individuals was used by Celera to generate the sequence of the human genome; one of the 5 individuals used in this project was Venter. Venter was suddenly fired by Celera in early 2002 after it became clear that selling genome data would not become profitable and Venter resisted efforts by the company board to change the strategic direction of the company.
Venter founded The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in 1992. Venter is currently the president of the J. Craig Venter Institute, created and funded by TIGR's board (which Venter chairs). In June of 2005, he co-founded Synthetic Genomics, a firm dedicated to using modified microorganisms to produce ethanol and hydrogen as alternative fuels.
Venter has been the subject of several articles, notably in Wired and The Economist in December 2004. As of 2004 he is currently circumnavigating the globe on board his luxury yacht Sorcerer II, collecting microorganisms from seawater and sequencing their genomes. The U.S. government is subsidizing the cruise through grants from the Department of Energy.
Craig Venter is circling the globe in his luxury yacht The Sorcerer II that updates the great scientific voyages of the 18th and the 19th centuries, HMS Beagle and HMS Challenger. Craig Venter is capturing the DNA of bacterias and viruses on filter paper and shipping it to be sequenced and analyzed at his headquarters in Rockville, Maryland. The hope is to uncover tens or even hundreds of millions of new genes, an immense bolus of information on earth's Bio-Diversity. Venter says "We will be able to extrapolate about all life from this survey. That will put everything Darwin missed into context." The microorganisms may also hold the key to generating a near-infinite amount of energy, developing powerful phamaceuticals and cleaning up the ecological messes our species have made. Thus the voyage maybe helpful in both, answering questions of micro-evolution and the survival of our species.
