And Future Ambitions Editor's Note: For the past four years, former National Institutes of Health researcher J. Craig Venter has been a major figure in the turbulent debates and scientific discoveries surrounding the study of genes and genomes. Events heated up in 1991, when NIH attempted to patent gene fragments, which were isolated using Venter's expressed sequence tag (EST)/complementary DNA (cDNA) approach for discovering human genes (M.A. Adams et al., Science, 252:1651-6, 1991). NIH's mo

The decision on whether the National Institutes of Health should continue its quest for patents on partial human cDNA sequences now rests with Health and Human Services secretary Louis Sullivan. In September, NIH director Bernadine Healy revealed that the agency had received an initial rejection from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) for the approximately 2,700 partial gene sequences generated by former NIH researcher Craig Venter and others. Then, on October 5, an HHS spok

While working toward his doctorate in 1973, plant geneticist Peter Gresshoff received an invitation to attend one of the meetings sponsored every summer by the Gordon Research Conferences. For Gresshoff, the mere fact that he was tapped to join the select group of 100 scientists participating in the conference constituted an honor in itself. Substantially more exciting, though, was the prospect of spending a week in close quarters with some of the top researchers in his field. The invitation c