A Life Decoded by J. Craig Venter

Author:J. Craig Venter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

With the availability of the second genome of a free-living creature we were able to launch a new discipline, that of comparative genomics. Some of the reactions to that development were carried by The Scientist:12 “I started reading the portion of the Mycoplasma paper on the comparison of the genomes and all of a sudden it dawned on me—Wow, this is going to be a whole new field of biology with enormous implications,” said David Smith of the DOE. Though they had backed our efforts, even they were only just coming to terms with the ramifications of what we were doing. As was Elke Jordan, the deputy director of the NIH genome institute, first under Watson and then Collins: “I think we’re going to take our baby steps on the microbial genomes and then—when the bigger, more complex genomes like yeast, C. elegans and Drosophila become available—we’ll transfer some of the experiences to them.” In the Scientist article, Ham summed it all up perfectly: “Craig built this whole thing over the doubts of virtually everybody else in the country. It seemed like everyone was expecting him to fail and fall on his face. But he’s delivered more than anyone ever thought and quicker.” I was just getting started.

My yearlong struggle to have the TIGR EST work published finally succeeded in September 1995 with a special 377-page Genome Directory issue of Nature.13 The previous month saw a turning point in my battle for recognition when the editor of Nature, John Maddox, wrote an unusual editorial14 that discussed the “irksome” conditions on the use of my EST data. It opened with the memorable line: “‘If you publish this Venter stuff,’ said the distinctive voice on the telephone a few months ago, ‘I can promise you that nobody in the US genome community will ever send you anything ever again.’” Maddox continued: “The source of the voice, who will recognize himself, is one of the most distinguished geneticists in the United States.” A Nature editor later told me that the distinctive voice was, of course, that of Jim Watson.

Maddox had always had an eye for headlines as well as for science and decided to publish the paper despite the threats: “There are several good reasons (other than bravado) for publishing this material. The chief, as will be seen when the Genome Directory is distributed, is that the work described is excellent science with great intrinsic interest. The scale of the enterprise is also remarkable. Venter’s group will be reporting that the total length of the ESTs now sequenced amounts to 5 million base-pairs, or some 0.15% of the human genome…. [T]here are more than 55,000 ESTs that correspond to authentic genes, of which only some 10,000 are at present logged in public databases.”

The scientific community and the press applauded our efforts with front-page stories and headlines that marked them as the starting shot of the human genome race: “Gene Pioneer Opens His Databank”;15 “New Directory Is First Atlas of Ourselves”;16 “Rapid Gains Are

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