Gene maverick comes clean

Craig Venter, the controversial leader of Celera Genomics’ project to decode the human genome, has announced that the DNA the company used was largely his own. Both Celera and the publicly funded Human Genome Project consortium released first drafts of the human genome in June 2000. At the time, Celera said it had used DNA from five anonymous people from different ethnic groups. Now Venter has told The New York Times that his own DNA was the largest contribution. He claims he did not make his contribution known at the time “because I didn’t want it to be the issue or the focus”.…