Sequencing the Human Genome: Transcript: Introducing Craig Venter
Good evening. It is a pleasure to be here in this small seminar room, and I would like to make only three points before we get on with the real material.
Every Friday night since 1890, biological scientists have been meeting at Woods Hole. The first of these lectures was given by Whitman after whom the building is named. The second lecture was given by Gardner, after whom a road is named. By and large, most of the first year's lectures were based on an appreciation of science by scientists who had almost done the work. Since then it has changed radically, and in the last few decades most of the lectures have been given by scientists who have done the work and made the major discoveries of our time. In fact, I would like to point out that on this 111th year of the Friday night lectures at the MBL, which antedate by at least 11 years the lectures in Stockholm in December, that many of the people who have given these lectures have overlapped, and are introduced as simply one of those.
The lecture is the last of the Friday night evening lectures of this year. It is the 111th, as I said, in this series. It is also the fourth time that it marks the evening lecture of the Ellison Medical Foundation on the molecular biology of aging. And the reason we are here is because Josh Lederberg had the wisdom to put the Ellison Medical Foundation together to support basic biomedical science. Our first lecturer in that series was Eric Kandel, that was followed by [?], and we are delighted tonight to have Craig Venter.
Our introducer tonight is David Baltimore, who has lectured both here and Sweden. He is best known for the work on reverse transcriptase, the work that has had tremendous importance with respect to what its inhibitors have done for human health. He is less well known to most people in the world for an important transcription factor that explains almost all of innate and acquired immunity, and of kB, and by having discovered the BCL label of enterokinase, the inhibition of which cures one form of leukemia. We are in a distinguished room. We have distinguished speakers and I would like to introduce David Baltimore.
Introduction by David Baltimore:
As Gerry has said, Friday nights at the MBL in the summer are very special. Many world class scientists have graced this podium, but few are as accomplished as Craig Venter. Craig has chosen an unusual path in science, making him a truly unique person. His path has been that of an outsider. When the common wisdom was that we should systematically map and sequence the human genome, he said, "No, let's mine it for the goodies first, taking the low hanging fruit."
Others had similar ideas, but not Craig's guts. So, in 1992 he left his position as section chief and lab chief at NIH, and set up a private laboratory, the Institute for Genomic Research or TIGR. There he developed the key strategy for finding genes, and filled human genome sciences and ultimately GenBank with his discoveries.
He then moved on to sequencing microbial genomes, and when he announced in 1995 that by whole genome shotgun random sequencing, TIGR had finished the haemophilus influenza genome, we knew that the world of biology would never be the same.
One of the next genomes TIGR sequenced was that of the archaebacteria, Methanococcus jannaschii for a friend of mine, a friend of many of us here at Woods Hole, my neighbor Holger Jannasch, the late Holger Jannasch.
In 1998, Venter combined forces with Perkin-Elmer to form Celera, and set about sequencing the human genome, and in three years finished a draft and published that in Science. But that is Craig's story to tell.
Craig is one of the most cited biologists of our day. He started science as a PhD from the University of California San Diego. Craig Venter.
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