J.Craig Veneter and Francis Collins

J Craig Veneter was born on October 14, 1946 in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is an American Biologist. Veneter founded the institute for genomic research. He served in the United States Navy during the Vietnam war (where he working with intensive care ward of a field hospital. Veneter attended school at Mills High school. He went to a community college, College of San Mateo. Where he received his BS degree in biochemistry and his PhD in physiology and pharmacology. AT UCSD ( University of California San Diego) he was mentored by Nathan D Kaplan a biochemist. Francis Collins was raised on a small farm in Virgina's Shenandoah Valley. Collins didn't attend school but rather he was home schooled by his mother until he hit the 6th grade. Collins earned his BS in chemistry at the University of Virgina. He received his PhD in physical chemistry at Yale university.

    J Craig Veneter on the left and  Francis Collins on the right

The human genome project is an international reserch project with the goal of finding out the sequence of chemical base pairs of DNA. THe project began in the early 1990's. The project mostly focused on the genetic make up of human beings. The project also researched/ studied on E Coli, fruit flies, and lab mice. For the human side of the research , there were willing blood donors of male and females. The project was very expensive so they decided to use the ''shotgun theory'' which was to breakup the genome into smaller pieces into ''Vectors''. These vectors can be inserted into bacteria so that they could be copied using DNA replication. The genome that were broken apart are mapped out to chromosomes.

The contributions of Veneter and Collins to the Human Genome project toward DNA are still increasing now. A better understanding of DNA for new advancements in medicine and biotechnology, Genetic tests to find diseased genes such as breast cancer and liver disease.

Resources:

Wikipedia - Human Genone project

Wikipedia - Francis Collins

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Nature