Moving dirt at JCVI La Jolla

After celebrating the ground breaking of JCVI La Jolla, McCarthy Building Companies immediately got to work preparing the land for construction. First the crew set up a work area to house the staff and equipment needed for the project. The site was cleared and stabilized for construction...

Scientist Spotlight: Meet David Wentworth

During the height of the H1N1 Flu pandemic, David Wentworth was running a microbial genetics laboratory at the Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) where he was instrumental in developing a method to amplify influenza genomes regardless of strain using “universal...

2012 JCVI Internship Program Is Now Accepting New Applications

Wow! Another year has gone by.  Its hard to think it is November - almost December with the warm weather we have been enjoying.  However it did not start that way. The 2012 JCVI Internship Program is open to accept spring and summer applications. The application process...

JCVI La Jolla Breaks Ground

It is official! On Tuesday, September 20th JCVI officially broke ground on a new La Jolla, California sustainable lab, to be located directly on the campus of the University of California, San Diego. Craig Venter, JCVI Founder and President along with UCSD Chancellor Marye Anne Fox; Vice...

Evaluating Strain-level Variation of Key Acidogenic Species in Dental Plaque Biofilms

The characterization of the dental plaque microbiome, using traditional 16S rDNA profiling strategies, illustrates both the strengths and the limitations of this method. The central limitation of the 16S rDNA methodology is the inability to decipher strain-level variation within a...

Cataloguing the Gene Expression Patterns of Dental Plaque Biofilms: A Reference Dental Plaque Transcriptome

The RNA-Seq method has been widely adopted as an alternative to the use of DNA microarrays. In most contexts, the RNA-Seq method is implemented when a single reference organism is being studied. Our project endeavored to establish working methods to enable the generation of cDNA libraries that...

Surrogate Methods for Profiling Species of the Oral and Gut Microbiome

We engaged in an effort focused on alleviating a substantial barrier facing the human microbiome research community. While powerful, the 16S rDNA gene is insufficiently divergent to allow discrimination of many species and essentially no strains present within communities. The increasing costs...

The Mobile Lab Is Going to Sunny San Diego

Late one evening in January 2006, the mobile lab pulled into the parking lot at 9704 Medical Center Drive. It was such an exciting evening! Within a few days, we had all the lab supplies on it and began visiting students. The first school in the Washington Area was Patapsco Middle School in...

The Hill School: Day 2

The day started early Tuesday with first period.  Thirty eager students arrived on the bus to determine the results of the amplification of the DNA they extracted the day before.  The PCR ran overnight, copying part of a conserved gene in plants, RuBisCo, that can be used to...

S. pneumoniae sticks to dying lung cells, worsening secondary infection following flu

Sailing the Seas in Search of Microbes

Projects aimed at collecting big data about the ocean’s tiniest life forms continue to expand our view of the seas.

What the Public Should Not Know

J. Craig Venter, PhD, argues scientists have “a moral obligation to communicate what they're doing to the public,” and that more studies deserve greater public criticism.

Scientists coax cells with the world’s smallest genomes to reproduce normally

The discovery could sharpen scientists’ understanding of which functions are crucial for normal cells and what the many mysterious genes in these organisms are doing

San Diego arts, health, science and youth groups to share $71M from Prebys Foundation

The J. Craig Venter Institute is the recipient of three awards totaling more than $1.5M to study SARS-CoV-2 and heart disease

Reflections on the 20th Anniversary of the First Publication of the Human Genome

A new wave of research is needed to make ample use of humanity’s “most wondrous map”

Scientists rush to determine if mutant strain of coronavirus will deepen pandemic

U.S. researchers have been slow to perform the genetic sequencing that will help clarify the situation

After saving countless lives, Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith retires as his own health falters

He has been a fixture in San Diego science for decades