Venter Appointed Visiting Scholar

J. Craig Venter, the geneticist known for sequencing his own DNA and challenging the federal government in a race to map the human genome, recently joined Harvard’s Origins of Life Initiative as a visiting scholar.

Venter, whose one-year appointment started March 1, will be working with Harvard scientists to further synthetic biology research by creating artificial cells.

Dimitar D. Sasselov, who directs the Origins of Life Initiative, met Venter at a small conference on the concept of life held in Connecticut last August. The two discovered their shared interest in synthetic biology, and Venter expressed interest in joining the Initiative.

“Craig realized we were well ahead and on our way, and it was exciting for him to join us,” Sasselov said.

The Origins of Life Initiative, an interdisciplinary faculty effort that seeks to serve as a “bridge between the physical and the life sciences,” has been in operation for about a year and a half, according to Sasselov. Team members, whose fields of research range from astronomy to molecular and cellular biology, are exploring the possibility for multiple origins of life and what this means from a biochemical perspective.

“All our individual projects are linked together in trying to answer the big question of the uniqueness of life,” Sasselov said. “Or more simply put, how unique is life?”

Although Venter’s role as a visiting scholar is not well defined, he will be working closely with Harvard Medical School professor Jack W. Szostak in exploring cell reconstitution, which deals with synthesizing the basic elements of the living cell.

“Craig has long-standing interest in ways of trying to build up cells from their components,” Szostak said. “It’s very exciting to have a scientist of his abilities join our efforts.”

Venter is also the founder and president of the J. Craig Venter Institute for genomic research.

Though his staff assistant said that “people like Craig are usually not available at the drop of a hat,” Venter summed up his motivations for joining the initiative in a very short phone interview yesterday, before jetting off to India. Venter said that the group he is joining is “incredible” and that this is what made the prospect of coming to Harvard “attractive.”

University science spokesman B.D. Colen said that Venter’s joining the Origins of Life initiative is “extremely significant because it speaks to the seriousness of this particular effort.”

—Staff writer June Q. Wu can be reached at junewu@fas.harvard.edu.

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