Ocean Study Yields a Tidal Wave of Microbial DNA

摘要

After relishing the role of David to the Human Genome Project's Goliath, J. Craig Venter is now positioning himself as a Charles Darwin of the 21st century. Darwin's voyage aboard the H.M.S. Beagle 170 years ago to the Galapagos Islands netted a plethora of observations—the bedrock for his theory of evolution. Four years ago, Venter set sail for the same islands and returned 9 months later with his own cache of data—billions of bases of DNA sequence from the ocean's microbial communities. But whether that trip will prove anything more than a fishing expedition remains to be seen.