Media Center

21-May-2024
Collaborator Release

Phytoplankton Genetically Sequenced at Sea for the First Time

Viking’s Initiative with UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and J. Craig Venter Institute Aims to Provide Better Understanding of the “World’s Lungs”

01-May-2024

Tae Seok Moon, Ph.D. and Nan Zhu, Ph.D. join J. Craig Venter Institute faculty

JCVI continues to actively recruit faculty to expand core research areas, including human health and synthetic biology

18-Apr-2024
Press Release

Groundbreaking study reveals oral microbiome’s role in immune response and COVID-19 severity

Newly developed AI model shows that saliva is a better predictor of COVID-19 severity than existing blood tests

21-Mar-2024
Press Release

Scientists develop method to efficiently construct single-copy human artificial chromosomes (HACs)

This new tool will allow scientists to work in mammalian systems in ways only previously available in bacteria and yeast

HACs have wide potential research applications to synthetic biologists and may eventually aid in delivering DNA in clinical applications

19-Mar-2024
Collaborator Release

With combined funding of 3,000,000 euros the BBVA Foundation’s Fundamentos Program supports five innovative exploratory research projects on core questions in basic science

JCVI work supported through The Physical Basis of Cell Division in Minimal and Synthetic cells (MINCELL) Fundamentos Program

11-Mar-2024
Workshop Alert

12th Build-a-Cell Workshop hosted at J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla

The workshop will take place March 29, 2024 with registration closing March 19

22-Feb-2024
Collaborator Release

New LongCOVID research launched by PolyBio’s global consortium of scientists

Funding will deepen research on the persistence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in LongCOVID patients and launch new clinical trials

30-Jan-2024
Press Release

J. Craig Venter Institute contracted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to rapidly construct synthetic influenza genes

Genes will be used to help develop seasonal and pandemic vaccines, improving response time and vaccine efficacy

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Return to Sorcerer II, The Mediterranean Season

Hello everyone! On May 2nd I flew from San Diego to rejoin Sorcerer II in Valencia Spain. Sorcerer II has been in Spain since our last sample in November, during that time her crew has been very busy upgrading systems and getting the rig certified. Sorcerer II is looking great and is ready for...

Looking for a Few Good Genomes (to sequence)!

The JCVI is one of three centers funded by the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) to provide sequencing and genotyping services to the infectious disease community. We are continually looking for researchers who would like to have organisms of research interest to...

Influences of trace metals on biological evolution

Scientists show how trace metal chemistry and global changes in oxygen have influenced the evolution of metalloproteins and the Eukaryotes A paper is being published in PNAS this week about how the varying abundance of trace metals in the environment has influenced biological...

JCVI Scientists Recognized by ASM

Drs. Karen E. Nelson and Kenneth H. Nealson are both being recognized by the American Academy of Microbiology (ASM) tomorrow, May 26, 2010. Karen has been elected to Fellowship in the ASM. She is one of seventy-eight new members that have been selected through a peer-review process based on...

Scientist Spotlight: Hamilton O. Smith and Clyde A. Hutchison III

Two of the superstars of science at the helm of the effort to make a synthetic cell (a cell with a completely man-made set of genetic instructions) are Hamilton Smith and Clyde Hutchison, or Ham and Clyde as they are affectionately known to colleagues. Since 2003 when they started working...

Happy DNA Day!

This past March, we had a great time participating in the science programs in San Diego. We ended the month with the SD Science Festival with over 30,000 participants. It was such a busy day - I forgot to take pictures. The venue was Petco Park with hundreds of exhibits and hands-on...

Recomb - Computational Proteomics

I recently attended the Recomb satellite conference on Computational Proteomics (downloads for talk and poster) in San Diego, CA. It was a kind of homecoming for me. I was a computational proteomics researcher at UCSD as a grad student with Vineet Bafna. Many of my classmates were still there,...

A Positive Charge

I’m thinking of the day’s schedule school visit, the activity and the positive charge it will produce in me and the students.  I get so excited during our school visits.  It’s like the feeling I get on Saturday morning while watching my favorite cartoons. (Yes, I still watch...

We Had Fun with Genomics!

Wow! It’s been an exciting week!! Crystal Snowden and I flew to San Diego Friday, March 5th – jumped off the plane and the fun began! We went straight to the lab and set up for BEWiSE and prepped for Expanding Your Horizons (EYH). We are really fortunate to have such a great team in the...

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17-Jan-2024
Grow by Ginkgo

Getting Under the Skin

Amid an insulin crisis, one project aims to engineer microscopic insulin pumps out of a skin bacterium.

24-Oct-2023
Noema

Planet Microbe

There are more organisms in the sea, a vital producer of oxygen on Earth, than planets and stars in the universe.

29-Aug-2023
Vanity Fair

The Next Climate Change Calamity?: We’re Ruining the Microbiome, According to Human-Genome-Pioneer Craig Venter

In a new book (coauthored with Venter), a Vanity Fair contributor presents the oceanic evidence that human activity is altering the fabric of life on a microscopic scale.

21-Aug-2023
GEN

Lessons from the Minimal Cell

“Despite reducing the sequence space of possible trajectories, we conclude that streamlining does not constrain fitness evolution and diversification of populations over time. Genome minimization may even create opportunities for evolutionary exploitation of essential genes, which are commonly observed to evolve more slowly.”

09-Aug-2023
Quanta Magazine

Even Synthetic Life Forms With a Tiny Genome Can Evolve

By watching “minimal” cells regain the fitness they lost, researchers are testing whether a genome can be too simple to evolve.

15-May-2023
Science

Privacy concerns sparked by human DNA accidentally collected in studies of other species

Two research teams warn that human genomic “bycatch” can reveal private information

10-May-2023
New York Times

Scientists Unveil a More Diverse Human Genome

The “pangenome,” which collated genetic sequences from 47 people of diverse ethnic backgrounds, could greatly expand the reach of personalized medicine.

10-May-2023
Nature

First human ‘pangenome’ aims to catalogue genetic diversity

Researchers release draft results from an ongoing effort to capture the entirety of human genetic variation.

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