Though HLI is accusing Venter of sharing proprietary company information, the institute has sued the J. Craig Venter Institute, not the man himself.
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Fluorescence in the venter (underbelly) of a male tree frog.
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Venter believes we have entered the digital age of biology.
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Venter had the privilege to try to change his destiny.
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By 933, Venter aims to have sequenced a million genomes.
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CRAIG VENTER: No, we hire a lot of computer scientists.
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CRAIG VENTER: I know, but you led me down there.
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It can't -- CRAIG VENTER: The concern is the dual use.
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CRAIG VENTER: No. We don't know what the limit is.
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Indeed, genomic sequencing may soon cost next to nothing, Venter said.
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"We are rewriting the pig genome for organ transplantation," says Venter.
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To drive his point home, Venter encoded messages in Synthia's genome.
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"I think this belongs to detectives, not genealogists," says Rae-Venter.
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Venter says his own prostate cancer was diagnosed at the clinic.
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CRAIG VENTER: -- that could read the DNA and boot it up.
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Ms. Rae-Venter said she was not aware of these conversations.
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"We wanted to know the basic gene components of life," Venter said.
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Venter says their findings have changed his static view of the genome.
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And that's just what Venter and his colleagues set out to do.
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As many have pointed out, Venter did not synthesize an entire cell.
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Dr Venter says HLI may eventually move into the drug business itself.
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Sort of like a -- CRAIG VENTER: It's like life in Los Angeles.
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CRAIG VENTER: No, contrast is -- JOE KERNEN: But it's much more invasive?
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CRAIG VENTER: Well, the first genome cost me $100 million to do.
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Ms. Rae-Venter was not the only genealogist approached by law enforcement.
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A study led by the geneticist J. Craig Venter highlights this point.
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Because you thought you were -- CRAIG VENTER: It is, because we thought we were just going to collect normal phenotype data on people -- JOE KERNEN: And suddenly you see -- CRAIG VENTER: -- and compare it back to the genome.
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So far, Venter and a handful of patients have passed through the Nucleus.
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"These are just a few examples of what we are finding," says Venter.
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Venter is famous for his work in biotech, including sequencing the human genome.
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CRAIG VENTER: So the challenge is: What does this mean for healthcare, right?
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CRAIG VENTER: Well, what the host cell had was the -- JOE KERNEN: Machinery?
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Ms. Rae-Venter then turned to an eye color prediction tool on GEDmatch.
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On the coast, occupying land owned by the university, Venter has built the Californian campus of his not-for-profit J. Craig Venter Institute, a rain-harvesting, sun-powered, carbon-neutral basic science lab made of concrete and Spanish cedar.
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The 2003-year-old Venter moved to Newport Beach to chase waves and girls.
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Anyone who thinks they can 'de-identify' a genome should think again, Venter says.
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As his 70th birthday approaches, Venter is only too aware of his own mortality.
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These breakthroughs allowed for the first genomic comparisons between two different species, Venter said.
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Rae-Venter says a large part of their queue are referrals from the FBI.
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Mr Venter says his company pays Amazon $1m a month for computing and storage.
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Sarah Venter, is an ecologist who embarked on a five-year study of baobabs.
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"I'll take a GPS coordinate of the seedling as we plant it," Venter said.
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"It took me about 30 seconds before I had the first response," Venter adds.
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CRAIG VENTER: No, it's a big concern today, because the population is much denser.
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CRAIG VENTER: They won't be self-replicating, although robots can make copies of themselves.
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"It's not like changing a couple genes and you've got it solved," Venter said.
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Dr. Venter and his team at JCVI continue to blaze new trails in genomics.
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In 2010 Craig Venter and his colleagues recreated the genome of a simple bacterium.
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" Announcing the cell's completion, Venter demonstrated an instinct for publicity, as The New York Times reported: At a press conference Thursday, Dr. Venter described the converted cell as "the first self-replicating species we've had on the planet whose parent is a computer.
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Venter led one of the two teams of scientists who first sequenced the human genome.
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That said, Venter also noted that the concept of a minimal cell is context-dependent.
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He founded the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in 2006 and the for-profit HLI.
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Ms. Rae-Venter agrees that these investigations have the potential to go off the rails.
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Dr. Venter is also a co-founder, chairman, chief executive officer of Human Longevity, Inc.
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Dr. Venter is co-founder, executive chairman and co-chief scientist of Synthetic Genomics, Inc.
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"I trust my own opinion more than I trust some pop science ethics commentator's," says Venter.
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Craig Venter thinks that sending living organisms to other galaxies on spaceships is "definitely" science fiction.
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Synthetic biologist and geneticist Craig Venter believes this is a distinct possibility—and a tantalizing prospect.
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Founder J. Craig Venter was the first person to sequence the human genome with private funding.
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Don't you think that -- CRAIG VENTER: I'm not as good looking, but our data is real.
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JOE KERNEN: You put it into a host bacterium -- CRAIG VENTER: Just to boot it up.
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JOE KERNEN: But the way that the nucleus or nuclei -- CRAIG VENTER: We just see them.
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They show up because of the water -- JOE KERNEN: Because of the water -- CRAIG VENTER: -- properties.
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The expression of it is in -- in your body is your -- CRAIG VENTER: Your physical characters.
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If synthetic biology has a rockstar, it's Craig Venter, and he's back with a new hit.
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Ms. Rae-Venter was able to narrow Lisa's likely father down to a grouping of brothers.
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With this, Venter wants to move from basic genetics to impacting individual lives "very directly", he says.
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As Dr Venter is quick to point out, this technology has other implications, among them for privacy.
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Venter left HLI earlier this year, claiming to have retired, though the company claims he was fired.
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Craig Venter was the mastermind of the private effort to map the genome in the late 1990s.
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In a world of shrinking scientific violets it has kept Dr Venter squarely in the public eye.
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J. Craig Venter, the genetic scientist, synthesized a bacterial genome consisting of about a million base pairs.
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CRAIG VENTER: It's a chemical that about 5 percent of people have a really bad reaction to.
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JOE KERNEN: So you were trying to do comparative biology with all these different -- CRAIG VENTER: Yes.
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In 2010, a team at the J. Craig Venter Institute created the first synthetic, self-replicating bacterial cell.
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"San Diego has always been the most cooperative environment in terms of biological and medical research," explains Venter.
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"Minimum is a relative term, based on your definition of traits and functions of a cell," said Venter.
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"Every genome is context-specific, and depends on the chemicals in the environment available" to it, Venter said.
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The force to be reckoned with in this field, though, is Craig Venter, a pioneer in gene sequencing.
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"Thus far, for the first few thousands, we only saw people who considered themselves fully healthy," Venter said.
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For those who undergo the testing and find no detections, patients still see positive mental benefits, Venter said.
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JOE KERNEN: And there was a pandemic not that long ago where 50 million people -- CRAIG VENTER: Yeah.
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And when you hear the name "Venter," I try to think of who I could go back to.
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The innovator was Dr. Barbara Rae-Venter, a genetic genealogist who had uploaded crime scene DNA to GEDMatch.
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Because these women have been public about their work, Ms. Rae-Venter said she felt safer coming forward.
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Dr. Venter focused on six genes that affect how we respond to antidepressants and antipsychotics, among other drugs.
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WHEN: Today, Wednesday, March 28th Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC EXCLUSIVE interview with J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., Co-Founder, Executive Chairman and CEO, Human Longevity; Founder, Executive Chairman and CEO, J. Craig Venter Institute, live from CNBC's Healthy Returns conference in New York City on Wednesday, March 28th.
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This is only one ingredient of what Venter hopes will become the biggest genotype-phenotype database in the world.
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Venter is in a relaxed mood as journalists, staff and dignitaries take their seats for an HLI press conference.
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Those who argue that genomics will only benefit the rich, Venter says, are "pulling that out of their asses".
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Most valuable of all, Venter wants to link these various -omes to patients' phenotypes: their anatomy, physiology and behaviour.
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JCVI-syn3.0. Image: J. Craig Venter InstituteBehold syn3.0, a synthetic bacterial genome that's smaller than anything found in nature.
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"Even with the sequence in hand, deciphering the operating system of the cell was a daunting task," said Venter.
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"Most things we will know in the future about us as a species," says Venter, "are to be discovered."
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Was that -- it was almost serendipitous that you realized you could use -- CRAIG VENTER: It happened from client 1.
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Sahm Venter, a former Associated Press reporter who covered Mandela's release from prison, will edit and annotate the collection.
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Dr. Venter is one of the most frequently cited scientists, and the author of more than 280 research articles.
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Judging by self-reported race, Dr. Venter noted, a doctor might prescribe Dr. Watson the wrong dose of medicine.
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"Safety is the main concern, of course, but you also get this incredible lifestyle," Mr. van der Venter said.
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"This is a study that had its origins a little over 20 years ago in 1995, when this institute sequenced the very first genome in history, Haemophilus influenzae," said the new paper's senior author J. Craig Venter, founder of the J. Craig Venter Institute, which specializes in genomic research, during a Wednesday teleconference.
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One reason that Venter is so passionate about understanding life is, paradoxically, because he once wanted to end his own.
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Venter plans to open other centres, for instance in South Africa, and says he is already considering another in London.
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"Just like a printer, it needs cassettes, but instead of colours, it's bottles of chemicals," Venter said over the phone.
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He was just as fired up as Venter when it came to the near-term medical applications of the DBC.
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In this regard Thiel agrees with any number of leading American researchers, including Craig Venter and the current NIH director.
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But a project completed around the same time by the J. Craig Venter Institute took the metaphor a step further.
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J. Craig Venter, the superstar geneticist who mapped the first human genome in 2000, has a new challenge: decoding death.
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CRAIG VENTER: We hope to have 100 to 200 over the next 3 to 4 years, spread around the country.
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"I thought it would really nice if I could help him but had no idea how," said Ms. Rae-Venter.
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Through months of painstaking work, investigators working with the genealogist Barbara Rae-Venter built family trees that converged on DeAngelo.
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On the eve of his 69th birthday, Craig Venter looks on, amused, as his digital doppelganger shuffles from foot to foot.
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Around that time, the stress was so intense that Venter was hospitalised with peritonitis, caused by a potentially life-threatening infection.
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"My genome has been out there longer than anybody else's and I wanted to put some context around it," Venter says.
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"Getting antimicrobials and vaccines to space is going to be important' and not at the slow pace of rocketships," said Venter.
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Venter is most famous for his role as a leader of the team that first sequenced the human genome in 2000.
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J. Craig Venter poses before a gene map of a flu-causing bacterium in his Rockville, Md., office, March 12, 1997.
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Dr Venter hopes this will allow the company to unpick the genetics of longevity and predict how long people will live.
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"Every day we're making major discoveries because of all this data," Venter told the hosts of "Squawk Box" on Wednesday morning.
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The rebuttal paper inspired a rebuttal to the rebuttal from Venter, who claimed there were "no major flaws" in his work.
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You told me you thought a billion dollars in revenue within ... CRAIG VENTER: So we just celebrated our fourth year anniversary.
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Dr. Venter began his formal education after a tour of duty as a Navy Corpsman in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968.
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Venter says his team and others will now work on identifying the purpose of some of the genes with unknown functions, and Daniel Gibson, a researcher who works at the J. Craig Venter Institute said that this work will ultimately lead to the creation of synthetic life with specific purposes, such as producing cheap biofuel and creating new medicines.
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Venter said seemingly healthy patients getting the tests have discovered cancer in its earliest stages — when the disease is usually most treatable.
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Back then it cost about $100 million to sequence an entire human genome, today Venter can do it for less than $1,500.
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"When you get [Venter] one-to-one he is a different, and calmer, beast from his image in the press," says Spector.
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Venter selected the only one that did not require him to spend extra time enlisted in the navy: the Hospital Corps School.
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In Vietnam, Venter was confronted again and again with that most basic instinct of all—survival—which took a heavy psychological toll.
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"Right now, we know less than 1 per cent of the genome in terms of how to really interpret it," declares Venter.
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Dr Venter reckons that to discover all of the genetic variation which human beings display, 10m genomes will need to be sequenced.
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Enter a new app, BeSpecular, which connects Venter to volunteers around the world who want to lend their eyes to the blind.
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CRAIG VENTER: There'll be silicon-based robots and things that -- JOE KERNEN: Will it be called -- will it be akin to life?
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It's brain tumors -- CRAIG VENTER: So we're doing a trial right now to see if we can do this with breast cancer.
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In 1998, Dr. Venter founded Celera Genomics to sequence the human genome using new tools and techniques he and his team developed.
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In 2008, Venter and his collaborator Hamilton Smith created the first synthetic bacterial genome by building a modified version of M. genitalium's DNA.
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A recent commentary in the journal Nature, entitled 'Human Genome Project: twenty-five years of big biology', does not mention Venter at all.
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Venter likened the process of determining essential and inessential genes to attempting to deconstruct a Boeing 777 to find out how it works.
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The potential to find targets for drugs is such that Mr Venter thinks HLI might one day transform itself into a pharmaceutical company.
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White Rabbit still puts a big emphasis on winning competitions, but Venter is also hard at work building an esports industry in Africa.
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But -- CRAIG VENTER: Well, look at all these young kids that have died just in the U.S. with this latest round of flu.
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JOE KERNEN: And then you found the first guy you did this -- CRAIG VENTER: We found this large tumor right under his breastbone.
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Dr. Rae-Venter, 70, and her team soon found a suspect by using the genetic and family tree data provided by his cousins.
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Genealogist Barbara Rae-Venter, who also worked on the Golden State Killer case, found a probable cousin of the boy's living in Hawaii.
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"I signed up to buy two but backed out," said Mr. van der Venter, who also owns an office block on the estate.
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That sultry day in June 2000 saw a brief pause in hostilities over each other's methods and results, in which Venter had accused the public effort of being inefficient, cumbersome and self-serving, and the consortium had attacked Venter as a self-promoting egomaniac who wanted to patent the human genome and, for a time, make the sequence available only to paying customers.
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Instead, arranged on the app around the fidgeting mini-Venter is a solar system of options – brain segmentation, connectivity and anatomy, and intracranial arteries.
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It took a team of five people, including the genealogist Barbara Rae-Venter, more than four months to identify DeAngelo as their prime suspect.
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At the same time, a genetic genealogist named Barbara Rae-Venter had been working on trying to find some usable DNA from the victims.
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The actual sequencing will be done by Human Longevity Inc, a genomics company started by Craig Venter that has raised $300 million since 2014.
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Like Craig Venter and Patrick Soon-Shiong before him, he hopes to remake the US health care system in the image of personalized medicine.
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CRAIG VENTER: Several well-known physicians have given statements to the press that getting these screens is a total waste of time and money.
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"There's nothing else like it," said Barbara Rae-Venter, a genetic genealogist who used the site to help crack the Golden State Killer case.
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"I was worried about my safety, which is why it's taken me so long to come out of the closet," said Barbara Rae-Venter.
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Venter believes it could also unleash a new era of forensics, with HLI trying to predict what people might look like from their DNA.
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J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., is regarded as one of the leading scientists of the 21st century for his numerous invaluable contributions to genomic research.
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The disease-producing genetic quirks its systems identify can be used as "pharmaceutical targets, so that people with those genetic changes don't die," Venter said.
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Acosta said another friend in her life has the qualities of a toxic venter, but now Acosta focuses more so on her friend's other qualities.
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Venter wants HLI to create the world's most important database for interpreting the genetic code, so he can make healthcare more proactive, preventative and predictive.
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It can also print the synthetic bacterium developed by Venter last year, which, with just 437 genes, is the simplest life ever, according to him.
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Venter emphasizes the precision required in the experiment: The transplantation failed repeatedly because of a single typo, a single misplaced letter in a key gene.
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The work of photography duo Kelia Anne and Luca Venter come together to bring to fruition their visually astute series titled Crisis of the Real.
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An Intrexon competitor with similar broad scope is Synthetic Genomics, which is also controlled by a wealthy, visionary entrepreneur, the genome scientist J. Craig Venter.
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Most investigators who upload crime scene evidence to the site still require the help of a highly skilled genetic genealogist such as Dr. Rae-Venter.
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In interview after interview, Paul Holes, a determined investigator who had spent decades chasing false leads, rejoiced in his decision to involve Dr. Rae-Venter.
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Diamandis started with Human Longevity Inc, a biotechnology company he co-founded in 280 with with genomics guru Craig Venter and stem cell pioneer Robert Hariri.
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Venter drolly remarks that he originally wanted to be able to remove his avatar's heart "Aztec-style" or pluck out its brain for inspection and introspection.
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To synthesise the insights from these ventures, Venter founded HLI with stem cell pioneer Robert Hariri and technology entrepreneur Peter Diamandis, founder of the XPRIZE Foundation.
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Venter is happy for his "age-related atrophy" report to be displayed here on a screen, given the good news about how young his brain looks.
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Venter says that the criticisms stem from the conservative nature of the medical community, notably when it comes to keeping the costs of screening under control.
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Dubbed JCVI-syn2525 (or just syn22016 for short), the new genome was designed and built by researchers from Synthetic Genomics and the J. Craig Venter Institute.
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Venter thought it would take his team about a year, but the process turned out to be incredibly arduous, requiring four more years than initially planned.
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Syn 3.0 also included genes that would allow it to grow fast enough to make a good lab model, as Venter admitted in the press call.
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I focused on the work of Levinson and Venter, futurist Ray Kurzweil and a scientist named Robert Hariri, one of the world's leading stem cell experts.
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Photo by Luca Venter You may recognize Charlie Hilton's airy, effortless croon from her days fronting Blouse, the gauzy dream-rock trio signed to Captured Tracks.
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Venter realizes that these aren't sustainable solutions to Africa's esports problem, but he's hopeful that, with enough encouragement, big game publishers will eventually offer their support.
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Because Dr. Venter will tell you, and it's in the book, for how long -- for 2,000 years, there's been the idea that there's something called vitalism.
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Ms. Rae-Venter then guided the team in how to fill out the branches using birth records, newspaper clippings, social media profiles and family tree data.
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Mr. van der Venter, a person of color,was a senior executive at Caltex and British American Tobacco, among other companies, before retiring and moving here.
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Its coauthors include Collins, now Director of the US National Institutes of Health, and Jim Watson of double-helix fame, who once, notoriously, likened Venter to Hitler.
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"When it came to finding human DNA donors, we felt that there could not be two better informed individuals on the planet," Venter writes in his autobiography.
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The real point, says Venter, is that actuarial arguments about efficient screening campaigns are cold comfort for those unfortunate enough to develop serious diseases early in life.
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This article has drawn on conversations with Venter that took place over more than two decades, beginning when the author first interviewed him for the 'Daily Telegraph'.
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CRAIG VENTER, a biologist and boss of Human Longevity, a San Diego-based company that is building the world's largest genomic database, is something of a rebel.
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According to the lawsuit, Venter left with his company computer and "immediately began using" it to set up an HLI competitor that would benefit from trade secrets.
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Detectives from the Sacramento District Attorney's office, who Rae-Venter had trained, uploaded a genetic profile of the suspect and built out family trees on their own.
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Venter says the process has helped reveal that our cultural understanding of what a healthy person is has little to do with science, and is often inaccurate.
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With a battery of genetic tests that can cost anywhere from $4,950 to $25,000, Venter believes he can uncover the deadly diseases lurking within seemingly healthy individuals.
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After hearing reports of genealogists showing up at police departments to offer their services, Ms. Rae-Venter has been reminded why a certification process could be useful.
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At that time, Dr. Rae-Venter was working with authorities in New Hampshire to identify a woman and three girls found in barrels in a state park.
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Human Longevity, headed by renowned genomics expert J. Craig Venter, claimed that just by looking at your DNA, it can craft a fairly accurate model of your face.
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In a paper this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr Venter and his colleagues describe the process, which they call "phenotype-based genomic identification".
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GSK's British rival AstraZeneca signed a similar deal with genome pioneer Craig Venter a year ago to sequence genes from up to 2 million people over 10 years.
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By implication, it is Venter himself who has triumphed by re-creating life out of life, who sees things not as they are but as they might be.
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In the 1990s Dr Venter ran a privately financed version of the Human Genome Project, using better technology than the public project (which sensibly then copied his approach).
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JOE KERNEN: Well, how do we -- CRAIG VENTER: And that's why we had this bioweapons treaty that every country -- they're supposed to stop research on making any bioweapons.
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CRAIG VENTER: So at my other company, Synthetic Genomics, we've been working with United Therapeutics to rewrite the genome of pigs to humanize the organs for transplant patients.
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Venter likened it to a Boeing 747 plane—you can take out one engine and have it still fly, but if you take out both, the plane crashes.
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"We do indeed inherit parts of our oral microbiome from our parents," said study co-author Chris Dupont of the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, California.
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In 2015, Ms. Rae-Venter assisted a detective who was trying to figure out the identity of a woman named Lisa who had been kidnapped as a baby.
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In September, Family Tree DNA formed its own investigative genealogy unit, headed by Rae-Venter, who worked on the Golden State Killer and other cases with the FBI.
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"We don't know what they provide or why they are essential for life—maybe they are doing something more subtle, something obviously not appreciated yet in biology," Venter said.
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Doctors feared that if they found evidence of amyloid, and a clear diagnosis of Alzheimer's, Venter would lose his investors and his job long before he lost his mind.
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Finally, there's the team of Barbara Rae-Venter, a more publicity-shy genealogist who identified the Golden State Killer suspect and then kept it a secret for four months.
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Rae-Venter learned of a new set of techniques that were pioneered by a UC Santa Cruz researcher named Richard Green, which would extract autosomal DNA from rootless hair.
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"We are learning that we are DNA-software driven species, and that your software determines everything about your life, including how long you are going to live," said Venter.
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But a study just published in Cell Host and Microbe, by Andres Gomez and Karen Nelson of the J. Craig Venter Institute, in San Diego, suggests it isn't true.
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The lawsuit also alleges that Venter protected an HLI employee who should have been fired, illegally tried to poach HLI employees, and benefitted from a "one-sided" employment contract.
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Earlier this year, though, Venter surprised investors when he stepped down as CEO one month after he underwent surgery for prostate cancer (discovered by his own genomic testing service).
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Whether a minimally genomed organism of the sort Dr Venter and his colleagues have created will actually have an important role, either practical or theoretical, remains to be seen.
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One of its main partners in this endeavour is Craig Venter, a man who led one of the human-genome sequencing projects that resulted in the announcement in 2000.
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If people like Venter, Barasa, and Mohsen can somehow build up a thriving esports league in Africa it could mean the end of companies like White Rabbit and Anubis.
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Venter and his team say they've created one of the simplest organisms theoretically possible using a combination of genetic engineering techniques, in-lab DNA-synthesis, and trial-and-error.
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"We now know, in the end result, that 32 percent of the genes required for life in this most simple of all organisms are of unknown function," Venter said.
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Ms. Rae-Venter started exploring genealogy as a hobbyist, but is now involved in dozens of criminal investigations, and her story reveals the kinds of clues genealogy can provide.
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Dr. Venter is a member of numerous prestigious scientific organizations including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Society for Microbiology.
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For Venter, the epiphany machine is just the thing that stole his mother ("ABANDONS WHAT MATTERS MOST") and poisoned his relationship with his father ("SHOULD NEVER BECOME A FATHER").
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Rae-Venter, a self-described William Gibson fan, responded that the system has clear disclosures on how the database may be used and so she sees no privacy violation there.
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In the 15 years since the genome brouhaha, Venter has continued to coauthor papers in leading journals, covering topics from genome transplants to the myriad sequences of microscopic marine life.
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When it came to deciding where to bring about that merger, and finish the job that he started with Celera, Venter returned to the West Coast with his wife Heather.
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Venter and his colleagues are toying with the idea of launching a contest to see who can devise the most beneficial and innovative "gain of functions" for their minimal genome.
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"This is a fabulous, interdisciplinary project," said Rhonda Roby, a geneticist at the Craig Venter Institute in California, who will be contributing its expertise in genomic reconstruction to the effort.
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Prominent genomics researcher J. Craig Venter has been accused of stealing trade secrets by the Human Longevity Institute (HLI), a company he founded in 2013 and left this past May.
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While his first synthetic genome was mainly a copy of an existing genome, Dr. Venter and colleagues this year synthesized a more original bacterial genome, about 500,000 base pairs long.
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And it's also important to empower (and fund) indigenous communities to protect the wilderness areas they depend on for subsistence and their way of life, Venter and his colleagues say.
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"Mbeki was responsible for a huge number of people dying," said Dr. Francois Venter, Deputy Executive Director of the Reproductive Health and HIV Institute at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand.
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"We quantify it ... looking into regions of the brain to make much more accurate predictions if you will develop Alzheimer's and the likelihood of phases as you age," Venter said.
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But ultimately Ms. Rae-Venter used her techniques find the woman's birth name, Dawn, and connected her with her grandfather, who was her closest living relative interested in a connection.
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The most analytical article on the subject, which came in the wake of a Twitter tiff between US journalist Carl Zimmer and Venter, appeared on US health and medicine website STAT.
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Venter used a code, with triplets of DNA letters equivalent to letters of the alphabet, to spell out messages, including the names of contributors to the Science paper announcing Synthia's existence.
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Venter says the company is collecting "tens of millions of genomes" and using machine learning to gain insights and help customers create proactive health strategies based on the information they learn.
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Originally from New Zealand, she'd first moved to the United States with her ex-husband, J. Craig Venter, the geneticist who would become known for his work sequencing the human genome.
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Adding more affordable housing options to the estate — still beyond the reach of all but the wealthiest South Africans — has helped broadened access without "contaminating" prices, said Mr. van der Venter.
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Barbara Rae-Venter, a genetic genealogist who also helped crack the Golden State Killer case, was able to confirm the identities of the victims via searches through DNA databases, according to Strelzin.
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"If you had [a DBC] hooked up to your desktop computer, we could email you insulin or a vaccine, and the device would produce it for you ready-to-go," Venter said.
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Earlier this year, researchers from Synthetic Genomics and the J. Craig Venter Institute successfully created an artificial bacterial genome that, with its scant 473 genes, is smaller than anything found in nature.
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In the Science paper unveiling the project, Venter is relatively restrained, but in his press conferences and in his book, his claims lie somewhere between science, philosophy, literature, and guru-like prophecy.
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And who is quoted matters as much as what is said: Pointing to Oppenheimer, Feynman, and Joyce elevates the idea of the iconoclastic genius, clearly implying that Venter belongs in their company.
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Venter and his team recently built a digital-to-biological converter (DBC) to remotely — think the other side of the world or even Mars — manufacture antibiotics, vaccines, and eventually, he says, life.
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At the helm was J. Craig Venter, a scientist who, in the late 1990s, had found a quicker and better way to sequence the human genome than the federal government's slower effort.
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Police in California and the FBI, working with a professional genealogist, Barbara Rae Venter, matched a crime-scene DNA sample to profiles in GEDmatch who were the killer's third or fourth cousins.
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Mimms' case was informative, however, because matches to third or fourth cousins, roughly the same as in her case, were what Venter and the detectives hunting the Golden State Killer were working with.
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After the BioXp was used to quickly synthesize an avian flu vaccine in 2013, Venter says that SpaceX's Elon Musk expressed interest in using a futuristic DBC to print terraforming bacteria on Mars.
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To this end, ecosystems researcher Oscar Venter and colleagues set about creating an updated footprint measurement using existing data on built surfaces, roads, crop and pasture land, nighttime lights, and human population density.
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J. Craig Venter receives the National Medal of Science on October 7, 2009 in Washington, DC. This time around, they used a variety of methods to whittle the genome down before transplanting it.
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But Venter also states that changing attitudes to the wearing of seatbelts and highlighting the dangers of drink-driving are also important factors in reducing road fatalities in the likes of South Africa.
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And with the assertion that what you cannot build, you cannot understand, Venter lays claim to a superior understanding of life—and causes the built object, the living cell, to ventriloquize the claim.
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Aralyte is also fortified with various vitamins, but a child will exceed the RDA for these vitamins when the product is taken at the recommended dosage with a regular diet, Venter points out.
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Ms. Rae-Venter is the newest character to emerge in the Golden State Killer investigation, which has since inspired others skilled at solving family history puzzles to offer their services to law enforcement.
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By the time he finished with the mystery hairs from New Hampshire, he was confident that he had given Dr. Rae-Venter what she needed, but he didn't feel the impact until June.
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To track her down, Baxter hires a supernatural bounty hunter named Jackson "Jackie" Ronin (played by Louw Venter), who introduces him to the strange, supernatural world lurking just under the surface of our own.
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Genome trailblazer J. Craig Venter, along with a team of researchers, has now created a minimal genome for bacteria — one that contains only 473 genes, less than the smallest-known naturally-occurring bacterial organism.
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Venter is the co-founder and executive chairman of Human Longevity, a San Diego-based company focused on providing gene sequencing services commercially and working on building the world's largest database of sequenced genomes.
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"We have long been interested in simplifying the genomic software of a bacterial cell by eliminating genes that are nonessential for cell growth under ideal conditions in the laboratory," Venter wrote in the paper.
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Venter says he's been working on the project off and on for 20 years, and that, essentially, the organism he's dubbed JCBI Syn 3.0 was the result of some very sophisticated trial-and-error.
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Human Longevity, a boutique wellness firm cofounded in 2014 by the genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter, offers a battery of comprehensive tests, including a full-body MRI scan, complete genome sequencing, and microbiome analysis.
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Neither can he say with whom he is collaborating, beyond that his point people are often Steve Kramer, a lawyer in the F.B.I.'s Los Angeles office, and Barbara Rae-Venter, a genetic genealogist.
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A few tables back to the right, the genealogist Barbara Rae-Venter, who helped crack the Golden State Killer case, chatted with a friend who was looking to invest big in this emerging industry.
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In April, a citizen scientist named Barbara Rae-Venter used a little-known genealogy website called GEDMatch to help investigators find a man they'd been looking for for nearly 40 years: The Golden State Killer.
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"We were quite surprised and shocked" In the study, a research team helmed by Venter and James Watson, director of science and research at the Wildlife Conservation Society, measured the human footprint on our planet.
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White Rabbit Gaming, an esports organization based in South Africa, actually made it into a qualifying round with the top 32 teams for The International 2017 despite "terrible ping," according to company founder Alwyn Venter.
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JOE KERNEN: But it's the way you use machine learning to -- from algorithm -- CRAIG VENTER: We now use machine learning to try and replace radiologists to do this better than humans can, and more accurately.
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But Williams said it didn't initially intend to employ its own genealogists — unlike Parabon NanoLabs, which has solved dozens of criminal cases, and Family Tree DNA, which hired Venter of the Golden State Killer team.
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Yes, Venter says, he would be lying if he did not admit it is "sad and annoying" being airbrushed out of history, but "the only way they would have been successful would be if I retired".
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With that in mind, exploring different forms of minimal genomes could have important industrial applications, said Daniel Gibson, another of the study's authors and another scientist at the J. Craig Venter Institute, during the same teleconference.
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Scientists created an artificial life form with just 473 genesResearchers from Synthetic Genomics and the J. Craig Venter Institute designed and created a "minimal" synthetic bacterial genome that's smaller than anything found in nature. JCVI-syn3.0.
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The drugmaker, working with genome pioneer Craig Venter, is launching a massive gene hunt in the most comprehensive bet yet by a pharmaceutical firm on the potential of genetic variations to unlock routes to new medicines.
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Over the years, the many profiles of Venter have highlighted the vision and energy that have made him consistently "over-promise and over-deliver", as Brad Perkins quips, though I suspect his critics would only half agree.
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It had come to her attention that another genealogist on the site, Barbara Rae-Venter, had been uploading files that seemed out of place, and Moore suspected they came not from family members, but from crime scenes.
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But, after Rae-Venter encouraged people to submit their own DNA in order to solve crimes, a woman in the audience raised serious concerns about the privacy implications of these databases and the potential for abuse by police.
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Barbara Rae-Venter, a genetic genealogist who also helped crack the Golden State Killer case, was able to confirm the identities of the victims via searches through DNA databases, according to New Hampshire Associate Attorney General Jeffrey Strelzin.
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His critics call him arrogant but, having talked to him on and off for more than two decades, I think Venter has earned the right to be bullish about his abilities to build a biotech venture from scratch.
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In his quest to make HLI the largest human sequencing operation in the world, Venter has bought 24 state-of-the-art HiSeq X sequencers from Illumina, based less than a mile away, making him their biggest customer.
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I have my own way of introducing Craig Venter, and that was that in the history of the world the great things about scientists is they literally find out things that no previous human had ever found out.
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Mr. Holes said that genetic genealogists like Ms. Rae-Venter, "are worth their weight in gold," because "they understand the DNA testing and DNA inheritance and the genealogy aspects," which is rare to find in a single person.
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SCIENCE TIMES An article on Tuesday about the unmasking of Barbara Rae-Venter as the genetic genealogist who helped identify Joseph DeAngelo as the Golden State Killer referred incorrectly to the individuals Mr. DeAngelo is charged with killing.
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CAMBRIDGE, England (Reuters) - AstraZeneca, working with genome pioneer Craig Venter, is launching a massive gene hunt in the most comprehensive bet yet by a pharmaceutical firm on the potential of genetic variations to unlock routes to new medicines.
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"We think our [HLI] database will have extreme value and we will give broad access through subscription," says Venter, who has also bought Cypher Genomics, a San Diego-based company selected by Genomics England to help interpret the genome.
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Also encoded in the genome was an email address, so the DNA machines (humans) who'd figured out what the DNA machine (Synthia) was saying could contact the DNA machines at the J. Craig Venter Institute and let them know.
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The work, published Thursday in Science, describes a self-replicating bacterium invented by Venter and his team that contains just 437 genes, a "genome smaller than that of any autonomously replicating cell found in nature," according to the paper.
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When Venter summoned up his chromosome 19 on a computer screen, he was confronted with a gloomy genetic portent in the form of the gene for apolipoprotein E (APOE), which is responsible for regulating levels of certain fats in the bloodstream.
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Synthetic Genomics, a major biotech firm founded by human genome pioneer J. Craig Venter, has been hit by a gender discrimination lawsuit, after a former executive claimed that she and other female employees were routinely discriminated against while working there.
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Dr. J. Craig Venter, one of the first scientists to sequence the human genome and the co-founder of biotech firm Human Longevity, describes the next frontier of DNA-driven research and how it will revolutionize the health care industry.
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Late last year, Dr. Barabra Rae-Venter, the genealogy consultant credited with helping solve the Golden State Killer case, used DNA from Bobby and matched it to DNA from the ancestry database to find a close relative of the boy.
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Craig Venter, a pioneer of genomics and boss of Human Longevity Inc (HLI), also in San Diego, is assembling the largest and most comprehensive database of genomic and clinical data in order to hunt through it for targets for new drugs.
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You may remember Venter as one of the leaders of the Human Genome Project, or the first scientist to ever transfer a synthetic genome into a living cell and have it continue to function (the first synthetic life ever, many argue).
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Investigators, including Kramer's team at the FBI working with the genealogist Barbara Rae-Venter, identified DeAngelo by tracing family trees from DNA profiles that partially matched profiles from crime scene DNA uploaded to GEDmatch, a public DNA database for genealogy enthusiasts.
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AstraZeneca is not the first drugmaker to start amassing troves of human DNA in this way but Venter, one of the first scientists to sequence the human genome, said it was the biggest commitment to date by any pharmaceutical company.
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Barbara Rae-Venter, a retired IP attorney who became a genetics enthusiast, drew applause for her role in using familial DNA in the GEDmatch database to narrow down 62 suspects in string of murders in the 1970s and 1980s to one septuagenarian.
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Google, now Alphabet, launched life extension research startup Calico, Larry Ellison has poured $400 million into the Lawrence Ellison Foundation to focus on aging and both J. Craig Venter and XPRIZE's Peter Diamand teamed up to form genomics company Human Longevity, Inc.
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At the turn of the millennium, at a ceremony at the White House involving President Clinton and UK prime minister Tony Blair, Venter had unveiled his first draft of the human genome, a mosaic of DNA from three women and two men.
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Later it emerged that the largest contribution to Venter's genome came from Venter himself and, a few years later, he completed the job to become the first human being to gaze upon his entire complement of DNA, all 6 billion chemical units.
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Though Venter wants to see the kind of step change in health last witnessed between 1910 and 2010, when improvements in medicine and sanitation increased the average lifespan from around 50 to 75 years, life extension is not the primary objective, he stresses.
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Further, plain old peanut butter "can safely and easily be given to children as young as four months" when mixed with formula or soft foods, and later by itself, says Carina Venter, chair of the International Network of Diet and Nutrition in Allergy.
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At a press conference, HLI's Chief Medical Officer, Brad Perkins, reels off Venter's achievements, from the first sequence of a living species to the creation of synthetic genomes—Venter left his signature in the DNA of what was called 'the world's first synthetic organism'.
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He began to forge his reputation in genome sequencing in Rockville, Maryland, in 1992 with The Institute of Genomic Research, a nonprofit private research institute (the capital T ensured, as Venter said at the time, "my institute was a Tiger (TIGR), not an Igor").
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It allowed them to discover how much we don't know, even about the core sections of the genome Venter and his colleagues also discovered that the genome contained a number of redundant genes — pairs of genes that performed the same function in the cell.
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"We started with the fairly naive assumption that we wouldn't see very big declines in wilderness areas because of the fact that they were so remote," says Oscar Venter, a professor at the University of Northern British Columbia and an author of the study.
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The venter is most likely seeking validation from someone who is willing to mirror their emotional intensity; if you aren't up for doing that, they will probably start to get the hint and seek out people who are more amenable to gassing them up.
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Even if all 168 convention signatories meet their 2020 protected area targets, their acreage monomania means they'd still miss 84 percent of threatened species, says Oscar Venter, a conservation scientist at the University of Northern British Columbia and the lead author of that study.
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Around eight patients can pass through daily and, by weaving together threads of disparate data, Venter hopes to make headway in understanding the fundamentals of ageing and, as a corollary, why many key diseases, including cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's, are strongly associated with old age.
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"A number of providers of such services have launched both here in South Africa and right around the world, and there is a growing body of anecdotal evidence which supports the position that this technology can play a key role in helping to save lives," Venter said.
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" (In a footnote Venter speculates that Mandela was referring to Matanzima's conflict with another paramount chief, who fled the country after offending Matanzima's dignity.) Regardless of their political differences, Mandela continues, "touchiness and intemperate language is no model for my own approach to people and problems.
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He is founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), a not-for-profit, research organization with approximately 250 scientists and staff dedicated to human, microbial, plant, synthetic and environmental genomic research, and the exploration of social and ethical issues in genomics.
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Venter counters, albeit anecdotally: the MRI of an otherwise healthy man in his early 2010s found that he had a thymoma under his breastbone, which was subsequently removed before it spread; another patient was found to harbour a grapefruit-sized ovarian cyst, which can lead to serious complications.
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"The primary aims of this study are to update the original human footprint map to provide a contemporary view of human pressures, and to create the first temporally consistent maps of the human footprint, such that patterns of change over time can be analysed," Venter and co. write.
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You see that these great discoveries, it's like we did this, we did that, we did this, and then you realize, I mean, Dr. Venter makes a point, some of the small obstacles took two years of round-the-clock work to get around some of these obstacles.
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Venter created the first artificial life in 2010; in 2014, Floyd Romesberg of the Scripps Research Institute created synthetic life using DNA base pairs that are not found in nature; and genetic editing tools like CRISPR-Cas9 are being used in laboratories big and small to fundamentally alter DNA.
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In 1992 Dr. Venter founded The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR, now part of JCVI), a not-for-profit research institute, where in 1995 he and his team decoded the genome of the first free-living organism, the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae, using his new whole genome shotgun technique.
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Read More: The Simplest Living Organism Ever Has 437 Genes and Was Made in a Laboratory This paper and the attention that Venter hopes it will garner could be the start of a worldwide revolution in medicine—if enough people buy into the idea, and the DBC itself, that is.
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"[My colleagues] and myself were discussing the philosophy of these differences in the genomes and decided the only way to answer basic questions about life would be to get to a minimal genome, and probably the only way to do that would be by trying to synthesize a genome," Venter said.
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It is, in other words, an intelligence test, but it emphasizes one kind of intelligence, selecting for those who—like Synthia's inventors—have a problem-solving mind-set and a brain for code, and who are digitally savvy and connected enough to contact the J. Craig Venter Institute with their solution.
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The company reached unicorn status in 2016, capitalizing on the declining cost of DNA sequencing and attracting high-profile investors like Illumina, Celgene, and GE Ventures, but lost that status in 2018 on the heels of company turmoil that included the departure of Venter and the loss of three other executives.
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Machines that sequence DNA got much more than a million times cheaper between 1995 and 2015; sequencing is now so cheap that in 2020, two decades after the first announcement of a human genome being sequenced, people at the J. Craig Venter Institute in San Diego talk of sequencing a million of them.
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"Look how fast we went from the Wright brothers' plane to supersonic jets, or from very crude DNA synthesis methods to now doing a human genome on average every 12 to 15 minutes, 24 hours a day," said Venter, who sequenced his own genome and released it to the world way back in 2007.
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After a fast-paced career in the corporate world, Mr. van der Venter, 54, enjoys strolling through the grounds of Val de Vie, a gated community 35 miles north of Cape Town that has been judged South Africa's best for the past two years by New World Wealth, a market research group based in Johannesburg.
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HLI has now submitted an analysis of its first 10,000 human genomes for publication, passing a milestone in creating what Venter hopes will be the world's largest, most comprehensive database of information to help transform healthcare and find answers to one of the oldest questions of all: is it possible to defy the ravages of ageing?
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