Search
J. Craig Venter Institute Inspires Kids on “Take Your Child to Work Day”
Last month when my kindergarten-aged daughter brought home a note from school to dress up as their future career choice, I was pleasantly surprised to hear from her that she aspired to be a scientist just like me. So, we dug through my clothes and found her an old lab coat and decorated the collars with some biology-themed pins. When I heard JCVI was hosting a “take your child to work day” I knew she would be very excited to visit. She and the other children were greeted with hands-on...
Variants in non-coding DNA contribute to inherited autism risk
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN DIEGO In recent years, researchers have firmly established that gene mutations appearing for the first time, called de novo mutations, contribute to approximately one-third of cases of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In a new study, an international team led by scientists at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have identified a culprit that may explain some of the remaining risk: rare inherited variants in regions of non-coding DNA. The...
JCVI to Receive Grant from Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to Define the Language of Human Cell Classification
Researchers at J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), led by Richard Scheuermann, PhD, director of JCVI’s La Jolla Campus, have been awarded a grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative DAF, an advised fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation as part of the Human Cell Atlas project. JCVI will be building on our previous work in developing an expanded human cell ontology that scientists can use to classify cells and effectively communicate among one another. On average there are around 30 to...
Donation — Success
Thank You for Your Support Thank you for making JCVI your charity of choice today and for supporting our efforts to fund cutting-edge research. This support gives philanthropic donors like you a way to invest in innovative, pioneering genomic research. Together, we are finding meaningful genomic solutions to human health and environmental challenges. Want More Information? Contact JCVI's Development Office at development@jcvi.org. The J....
J. Craig Venter Institute Teaches Students about Genomics at Annual High Tech Fair
In January, JCVI was one of more than 40 San Diego STEM-related organizations who participated in the Fleet Science Center’s annual High Tech Fair. This year more than 3,000 local middle and high-school students, their teachers, and families descended upon Balboa Park throughout the two-day event to engage in exciting and interactive educational experiences. Students learned about local research being done in a variety of fields and had the opportunity to speak with scientists about career...
Jillion
Java framework for reading, writing, analyzing and manipulating sequence and assembly data. Jillion supports most common data file formats used in bioinformatics and supports both Sanger and Next-gen data. The Java Informatics Large LIbrary fOr geNomics (Jillion) is an open source genomics software framework written in Java 8 to support bioinformatics. This library was created by Dan Katzel at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) and used by several projects including The Influenza...
Potential Breakthroughs in Treating Oral Disease Through Better Understanding of the Oral Microbiome
Most people think of bacteria as the enemy, but scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) are exploring ways to harness bacteria and phages (the viruses that infect bacteria) as a new way to fight infection. JCVI scientist, Anna Edlund, PhD, is leading one of our efforts to understand the human oral microbiome and learn what role bacteria play in both oral health and disease. Inflammatory gum disease (gingivitis/periodontal disease) and tooth decay are not only the two biggest...
Development of a high throughput sequencing and analysis pipeline for West Nile virus
Emmi Mueller1, Rebecca A. Halpin1, Nadia Fedorova1, Timothy B. Stockwell2, Danny Katzel2, Laura Kramer3, Suman R. Das1 1Virology Group and 2Informatics Department, J. Craig Venter Institute, Rockville, MD; and 3 Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Health, Slingerlands, NY West Nile virus (WNV) is a member of the Flaviviridae family of enveloped, single-stranded RNA viruses with a linear, non-segmented, positive-sense ~11,000bp genome. WNV is an enzootic virus...
Identifying Bacterial Antibiotic Resistance Markers in gut microbes
Ian Lamb, Manolito Torralba J. Craig Venter Institute, La Jolla, CA The gut microbiome plays a critical role in our health and well-being, but it also facilitates sharing of antibiotic resistance genes. However, antibiotic resistance genes can be identified by distinct markers which we screen in this study. Plasmids pTRACA18, pTRACA20, and pTRACA22 were chosen since they have demonstrated to be present in many gut microbes. This in turn allows the bacteria to spread antibiotic...
Genomic Data Analysis and Visualization for identification and characterization of WGS
Enrique Garcia-Assad, Indresh Singh, Pratap Venepally, Jason Inman J. Craig Venter Institute, Rockville, MD Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) is becoming available as a common place tool for clinical microbiology. If applied directly on clinical samples, this could further reduce diagnostic times and thereby improve control and treatment especially in outbreak events. A major bottleneck is the availability of fast and reliable bioinformatic tools to identify and characterize large...