Word: venter
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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...
...Venter flourished in the private sector. Backed by venture capitalist Wallace Steinberg, he founded the Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and within a year had been transformed from a government scientist with a $2,000 savings account to a millionaire. He gave gifts of stock to his family and Fraser's, and bought the Sorcerer. Meanwhile, he continued to pour money into genomics, completing gene maps of the Haemophilus influenzae bacterium in 1995, followed by those of H. pylori, which causes ulcers, and the syphilis microbe...
Even though TIGR was spewing out gene sequences at unprecedented rates, Venter was still restless. Then Hunkapiller called from his office at Perkin-Elmer to say that he had a new, faster machine he wanted Venter to see. What Venter saw was the future: a gene-mapping computer 50 times as fast as anything running at TIGR. With one of these machines, the 1,000 scientists who had spent 10 years decoding a yeast genome could have completed their work in one day. Emboldened by the new technology, Venter announced his plans to sequence the human genome rapidly. He founded...
With prestige and grants on the line, government and academic scientists regrouped and counterattacked. The most important naysayer, as usual, was Watson, but others quickly lined up behind him. Venter's "book of life," said one of the leaders of the federal genome program, would be a Mad magazine...