Description

Craig Venter, telephone interview by Kathryn Maxson, Rachel Ankeny (from Adelaide, AU), and Robert Cook-Deegan, conducted from Durham, NC, 27 July 2012. Craig Venter began working at the NIH in 1984, where he helped develop expressed sequence tagging (EST) for the rapid identification of genes. In 1992, Venter founded The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), where together with Mark Adams he sequenced the first free-living organism genome, Haemophilus influenzae, and also received funds to participate in the HGP. In the early 1990s, Venter became embroiled in a public controversy surrounding gene patenting when the NIH attempted to file patent applications on thousands of ESTs discovered and sequenced in his laboratory. This controversy extended to Venter’s involvement with Human Genome Sciences (HGS), a company that planned to claim patent rights for many ESTs sequenced by TIGR. Ultimately, the controversy contributed to the rapid data-sharing ethos of the HGP. In 1998, Venter founded Celera Genomics with the purpose of sequencing the human using a rival method to that of the HGP. His team’s 2001 publication of the human genome in Science appeared the same week as the HGP publication in Nature. Venter, the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), continues to contribute to both genomics and synthetic biology. This transcript is available beginning 1 July 2014. Keywords: Human Genome Project, HGP, interview, Bermuda Principles, Bermuda Accord, International Strategy Meetings on Human Genome Sequencing, data sharing, science policy, genomics, genome, genome sequence, genetics, DNA sequence, DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, NIH, National Institutes of Health, DOE, Department of Energy, Expressed sequence tags, ESTs, The Institute for Genomic Research, TIGR, Human Genome Sciences, HGS, Haemophilus influenzae, Celera Genomics, whole genome shotgun sequencing, WGS, J. Craig Venter Institute, JCVI, Craig Venter.