Its Niche By Ricki Lewis and Barry A. Palevitz J. Craig Venter is no stranger to contradiction and controversy. He seems to thrive on it.
ESTs are now a standard way to tackle a cumbersome genome.
In 1994 TIGR asked NIH to fund sequencing of the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae . NIH trashed the proposal. Even when Venter announced at a meeting that they'd assembled 90 percent of the genome and requested that their grant be reconsidered, NIH declined. Eventually, TIGR and HGS split, largely over HGS's profit motive. Yet in May 1998 Venter boldly announced that he and Perkin-Elmer Corp.'s new company, Celera Genomics, would sequence the human genome faster and more economically than the publicly funded international consortium.