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2019 Summer Internship Program
The 2019 Summer Internship Program which wrapped up in August was another rousing success at the J. Craig Venter Institute. Faculty and staff in both the Rockville (MD) and La Jolla (CA) campuses mentored and trained 25 students (high school, undergraduate, and graduate students) from across the country in cutting-edge technologies related to the biomedical field. High school students participated in the internship for 8-weeks and undergraduate and graduate students took...
Structure and alternative splicing of the presenilin-2 gene.
Missense mutations in the presenilin-1 (PS-1) and presenilin-2 (PS-2) genes have been shown to be causes of autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease (the AD3 and AD4 loci, respectively). Alternative splicing has previously been reported in the PS-1 gene. In this study, elucidation of intron/exon boundary sequences revealed that PS-2 is encoded by 10 coding exons. In addition, PS-2 cDNA cloning and RT-PCR using RNA from a variety of normal tissues revealed the presence of alternatively spliced...
Signature Infiltration and Maintenance on Plasmid Elements creating a Forensic Microbial System (SIMPLE-FMS)
J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) is developing a unique microbial barcode (“signature”) that can be easily be deployed in complex environments to create unique microbial signatures for environmental forensics operations. The barcoded signature will be 1) maintained for specific amounts of time in a complex microbial community (microbiome) with minimal disturbance to the native environment; 2) transferable to a diverse array of objects; and 3) contained through control...
Human Microbiome
Both inside and out, our bodies harbor a huge array of bacteria and other microorganisms collectively known as the human microbiome. Although bacteria are often thought to be dangerous, many of those that comprise the microbiome are essential for life. Our researchers are focused on understanding the delicate bacterial balance in the human body and how slight changes in that balance can either improve health or lead to diseases. JCVI Human Microbiome Research Impact Since the...
Optimizing Phagehunting Methods to Isolate and Amplify Bacteriophages
Shriya Singh, Enrique Assad-Garcia, Nacyra Assad-Garcia, Lauren Oldfield, Sanjay Vashee, and Derrick E. Fouts J. Craig Venter Institute, Rockville, MD 20872 There are an estimated 1031 bacteriophages (phage), viruses that infect bacteria, in the biosphere, thus comprising a significant portion of the biosphere on Earth. Of these, a mere 10,733 phages have been isolated and 2,061 phages have sequenced, complete genomes, with even fewer, only 1,073,...
Rapid cDNA sequencing (expressed sequence tags) from a directionally cloned human infant brain cDNA library.
A human infant brain cDNA library, made specifically for production of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) was evaluated by partial sequencing of over 1,600 clones. Advantages of this library, constructed for EST sequencing, include the use of directional cloning, size selection, very low numbers of mitochondrial and ribosomal transcripts, short polyA tails, few non-recombinants and a broad representation of transcripts. 37% of the clones were identified, based on matches to over 320 different...
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...
Ocean Microplastics Explained
As we wrap up sampling in the waters off of Maine, Dr. Chris Dupont discusses how collections of plastic particles in the water – or “plastisphere” – may be harboring fish or human pathogens. There may also be microbes responsible for degrading plastic, which are being investigated. Dr. Dupont's work on microplastics is a continuation of J. Craig Venter Institute's Global Ocean Sampling (GOS) program.