The Green Lagoon — Sampling in Albufera de Valencia

During our sampling in Spain last year Chris and I met up with Francisco Rodriguez-Valera. Francisco had some great suggestions for sampling sites and one of them was Albufera de Valencia, a shallow hypertrophic fresh water lagoon, located just 30 minutes drive south of Valencia . When...

Road Sampling Starts in Mar Menor, Spain

Before sampling was to resume on Sorcerer II, a 2 week multiple-site road sampling trip was planned. Chris Dupont arrived in Valencia a day after me, in the next two days we would load up a giant rental van and hit the road. On Wednesday May 5th we drove the 322 kilometers (200 miles) from...

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,...

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