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Novel Diversity of Bacterial Communities Associated with Bottlenose Dolphin Upper Respiratory Tracts
Respiratory illness is thought to be most the common cause of death in both wild and captive populations of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). The suspected pathogens that have been isolated from diseased animals have also been isolated from healthy individuals, suggesting they may be part of the normal flora. Our current understanding of the bacteria associated with the upper respiratory tract (URT) of bottlenose dolphins is based exclusively upon culture-based isolation and...
First Self-Replicating Synthetic Bacterial Cell
Genomic science has greatly enhanced our understanding of the biological world. It is enabling researchers to "read" the genetic code of organisms from all branches of life by sequencing the four letters that make up DNA. Sequencing genomes has now become routine, giving rise to thousands of genomes in the public databases. In essence, scientists are digitizing biology by converting the A, C, T, and G's of the chemical makeup of DNA into 1's and 0's in a computer. But can one reverse the...
<em>Medicago truncatula</em> Genome Database
Medicago truncatula, a close relative of alfalfa, is a preeminent model for the study of the processes of nitrogen fixation, symbiosis, and legume genomics. The genome was initially sequenced in a collaboration between the University of Oklahoma, TIGR (now JCVI), the Sanger Institute in the UK and Genoscope in France with funding from Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the European Union's Sixth Framework Programme INRA (France) , and the BBSRC...
Research Impact: Accelerating Efforts to Contain and Prevent the Zika Virus (ZIKV)
The rapidly developing Zika virus (ZIKV) outbreak has research groups, government agencies, and industry is all striving to develop a response plan to contain and ultimately prevent ZIKV spread. Currently JCVI is working with both private and public sector funders to sequence and analyze historical and current ZIKV strains. Work at JCVI is geared toward developing sensitive ZIKV diagnostics, significantly increasing the number of ZIKV genomic sequences available, and performing cutting-edge...
Unlocking the Mysteries of the Microbiome
In the early 2000s, JCVI researchers pioneered in the exploration of the human microbiome, the community of microbes that live in and on the human body. Originally while at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR, now part of JCVI) Drs. Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith were awarded a grant from DARPA to examine the microbes found in the human gut. This work was carried out by researchers at JCVI and published in 2006 in Science. While this team had previously published 16S surveys of the human...
June Grant Update
Congratulations to our JCVI Principal Investigators for the several successful grants that were awarded or that we received notification of in the month of June. All of the following PIs received official confirmation of awards to be made to them. Christopher Dupont, John Glass, Granger Sutton, Daniel Gibson, Charles Merryman, Rembert Pieper, Richard Scheuermann, Christopher Town, Reed Shabman, Orianna Bretschger, Sanjay Vashee and Sarah Highlander to the sum of $6,365,099. The topics of these...
Dr. Venter Delivers UCSD 2015 School of Medicine Commencement
Full text for the address follows. J. Craig Venter, PhD, UCSD , 2015 School of Medicine Commencement Address Chancellor Khosla, Dean Brenner, Dean Savoia, UC Regent Charlene Zettel, UC Regent Sheldon Engelhorn, invited guests, families and graduates, thank you for inviting me to speak to you on your very special day, and Congratulations on making it to this momentous occasion! It’s always an honor for me to give commencement speeches but it’s especially gratifying to come back...
Meet Richard Scheuermann, Ph.D., JCVI’s Director of Bioinformatics
Richard H. Scheuermann, Ph.D., who joined JCVI in 2012 from the University of Texas Southwestern as the Director of Bioinformatics, is an accomplished researcher and educator. He and his team apply their deep knowledge in molecular immunology and infectious disease to develop novel computational data mining methods and knowledge representation approaches. From an early age, Richard was very interested in science and the living world around him. He was a curious child who loved to...
Animal Forensics and Molecular Biology Techniques
A one-day high school workshop for New Hampton School’s Project Week Hosted by the J. Craig Venter Institute, Rockville, Maryland – March 11, 2015 Every March, the New Hampton School, an independent high school in New Hampshire, holds Project Week, an experiential learning program that allows students to choose from a wide array of unique activities, both on and off campus. This year, one project group traveled to Washington D.C. to complete a program on forensic...
Evaluating Strain-level Variation of Key Acidogenic Species in Dental Plaque Biofilms
The characterization of the dental plaque microbiome, using traditional 16S rDNA profiling strategies, illustrates both the strengths and the limitations of this method. The central limitation of the 16S rDNA methodology is the inability to decipher strain-level variation within a microbiome. Why is this important? It is becoming a common theme in microbiome research that microbiomes associated with the human host are distinct from those that inhabit the environment. The species present in...