Word: venter
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...early 1980s, Venter and Fraser were working on cell-surface receptors at the NIH. This was the dawn of the molecular revolution in biology, and the gene was emerging as the key. Finding genes was agonizingly slow work, however; scientists typically spent years locating and decoding a single...
...Venter decided he would become a doctor and work in the Third World. In a blazing six years, he finished his coursework, published a string of papers, was awarded his Ph.D. and found himself teaching med students. Along the way, he learned that his gifts lay less in medicine than in medical research. In the late '70s he met Fraser. They were married, and except for one brief professional separation have worked side by side ever since...
...Venter read a paper in the British science journal Nature describing a machine that could decode genes automatically. He flew to California and met with one of the machine's designers, Michael Hunkapiller. Within a few months, he had the first automated gene sequencer at the NIH. Within a year, the machine had decoded 100,000 letters in one region of a genome--fast, but not fast enough for Venter...
Then he had an epiphany: he realized that he didn't need to identify those parts of a cell's genome that code for proteins as long as the cell itself can identify them. Venter switched his attention from the DNA blueprint to the RNA templates the cell makes from those blueprints. His task vastly simplified, he began turning out gene sequences at unprecedented rates...
...Venter's success shocked and in some cases angered the scientific world. Watson famously dismissed Venter's sequences as work "any monkey" could do, and when their feud over the issue of patents ended, they were both out of the NIH. Watson retreated to Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., to head the research lab there. Venter started talking to investors...