J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI)

The J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) was formed in October 2006 through the merger of several affiliated and legacy organizations — The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and The Center for the Advancement of Genomics (TCAG), The J. Craig Venter Science Foundation, The Joint Technology Center, and the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives (IBEA). Today all these organizations have become one large multidisciplinary genomic-focused organization with more than 400 scientists and staff.

The Genomic Medicine Group at JCVI has been at the forefront of human genomics research and they continue their focus on providing a better molecular understanding of human health and disease propensity by further study of this first diploid human genome. The team is setting the stage for more individual genomes to be sequenced and analyzed over the next decade. The team is working in collaboration with several groups to better understand the genomic basis for some of the most prevalent and vexing diseases such as cancer and diseases of the heart, lungs, and blood.

Informatics is at the heart of any genomics research enterprise as it is critical for the analysis of large data-sets. The challenge in genomics is assembling in the correct order the thousands to billions of pieces of random DNA sequence that is generated by the whole genome shotgun technique. This is where JCVI informatics experts come into play. These scientists have developed the software, mathematical tools, and databases to assemble and analyze these genomes.

Just a few of the free and open source software tools they have developed include:
•   Celera Assembler  - The open source Celera Assembler can reconstruct long sequences of genomic DNA given the fragmentary data produced by whole-genome shotgun sequencing.
•   Comprehensive Microbial Resource (CMR)  - CMR is a free tool that allows researchers to access all of the publicly available bacterial genome sequences completed to date.
•   Metarep  - An open source suite of tools for high-performance comparative metagenomics.