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Voyage To Sequence DNA From the World's Oceans

Posted by simoniker on from the blub-blub dept.

joehoya writes "Wired has an extensive article about an expedition with the goal of discovering new microbial species and new genes in the world's oceans. The expedition is led by J. Craig Venter, who is best known for his involvement in the race to sequence the Human Genome. This is a really fascinating expedition with a pretty high geek quotient. I know, as I set up many of the computer and other electronic systems aboard, and traveled with the expedition as far as the Pacific side of the Panama Canal. In fact, you can see me (ok, the side of my head) in one of the article's pictures, next to the Captain while helping to take a sea water sample."

9 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. The ultimate goal here is... by darth_MALL · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sharks with frickin lasers on their heads.

  2. Yikes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    In fact, you can see me (ok, the side of my head) in one of the article's pictures, next to the Captain while helping to take a sea water sample.

    So that's what they're calling it nowadays, eh? ;)

  3. Patents? by mangu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you think software patents are bad, then what about gene patents? It seems that a big part of any gene sequencing project these days is an effort to find patentable genes. How can one patent what has existed for thousands or millions of years in nature is beyond my comprehension...

  4. privateer voyage by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Venter's genome survey is surely a dream geek voyage. But when he patents those genes, it's only his own dreams that will be coming true. Sure, Venter's entire career is built on public funding of open genomic science, back into which he declines to contribute. But even worse, many of the species he documents, and locks up for his own use, were developed over hundreds, thousands of generations of local people, coevolving and husbanding them into their beneficial condition. But Venter has the upper hand over the traditional genetic "developers", end-running them to capitalize on their innovations, only to license them back at a profit actually earned by his customers. Venter's technology is good, his science is great, but his economics is most foul.

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    make install -not war

    1. Re:privateer voyage by Angry+Toad · · Score: 4, Informative

      Venter is a grandstander and a media whore. There, I said it.

      He regularly trades off scientific benefit in favour of his own personal ego - to wit, most of the Celera genome is *his own DNA* and, even more egregiously, the dog genome is his own *pet poodle*, by all accounts.

      I've heard plenty of criticism of this latest bit of nonsense of his - he's going to grab plenty of attention as the father of "metagenomics" or some such nonsense, but it is going to be left to more rigorous scientists to come in and clean up the field that he has barged into.

  5. Re:Taking a risk? by sarah_kerrigan · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hello,

    Pretty soon legions of young, nubile, slashdot-reading, geek chix0rz will be flooding his inbox with requests for... well you fill in the blank

    Requests for taking part of the expedition, of course 0:-) (ok, offtopic, come to me...)

    Kisses
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    You'd stumble in my footsteps (Depeche Mode, "Walking in my shoes")
  6. possibly dumb question... by Daniel+Ellard · · Score: 4, Interesting
    If they just grab DNA out of microbes they find floating around in the ocean, how will they know what genes correspond to what? Wouldn't it make more sense to sequence the DNA of things about which we have some knowledge?

    (This isn't a rhetorical question -- I'm simply curious but ignorant.)

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    Disclaimer: I work for a company, but I don't speak for them.
    1. Re:possibly dumb question... by Angry+Toad · · Score: 4, Informative

      The basic idea is to get a sampling of the "genome content" of a volume of seawater, looking for genes related to, for instance, metabolism of metals, or peculiar photosynthetic components, or whatever. You then have an idea of both organismic and metabolic diversity in an area - do it straight down a water column and you see how this varies across layers of the ocean.

      Your point is a valid one all the same - this is a newish field called "metagenomics" and lots of professional scientists have been asking precisely the same question you did. The jury is still very much out on whether this is really going to produce anything useful.

  7. This has nothing to do with patents by Jonathan · · Score: 4, Informative

    I work for TIGR, and therefore indirectly for Craig Venter (Well, actually I work for Craig's soon to be ex-wife, and so I'm not a big personal fan of Craig).

    Craig's institutes, TIGR, IBEA, TCAG are *not busineses* -- they are non profit research institutions. Yes, Craig is egotistical -- but the whole point of the Sargasso Sea is science. There is *no profit* to be made or patents to be issued. Yes, Craig worked for a couple of years at Celera, but that doesn't mean everything he's associated with is commercial, any more than Linus having worked at Transmeta makes Linux commercial.