Posted on January 29th, 2008 by Simon Greenhill

Stamping his mark - on the bacterial genome

Category: bacteria, genetics, people

Andrew Pollack in the NYTimes reveals the secret message implanted in the recently announced synthetic bacterial genome.

You were expecting poetry perhaps? The secret messages hidden in scientist J. Craig Venter’s synthetic bacterial genome have now been revealed. They are — his name, and that of his research institute and co-workers.

I can’t decide whether this is kinda cute, kinda arrogant, or totally cool in a yay-for-hubris sort of way. Answers on the back of a postcard, please.

8 Responses to “Stamping his mark - on the bacterial genome”

JSinger on January 30th, 2008 5:33 am:

I can’t decide whether this is kinda cute, kinda arrogant, or totally cool in a yay-for-hubris sort of way.

I vote for “totally cool in a yay-for-hubris sort of way”. Science needs one, and only one, Craig Venter.

mr. gunn on January 30th, 2008 5:55 am:

Yay for hubris. I’d have at least put my name in there if I did it, along with something cool.

Mark Boguski on January 30th, 2008 6:14 am:

Not very original. I slipped a secret message into Michael Crichton’s sequel to Jurassic Park in 1995 which was detected and written about by a number of people. See
http://books.google.com/books?id=aIhu14SUsNIC&pg=PA84&lpg=PA84&dq=%22mark+was+here+nih%22&source=web&ots=tY1oUlZ-F0&sig=xsS4t1-edaKf-yLH89zpglCrATc

This example has also been used in various bioinformatics curricula and problem sets. See
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Class/FieldGuide/problem_set.html

The whole thing was inspired by my detection of Crichton’s forged dinosaur sequence in 1990.
See
http://www.markboguski.net/publications_PDFs/BioTechniques%201992.pdf

Simon Greenhill on January 31st, 2008 8:22 pm:

Thanks for the comments, guys!

Mark: those links are awesome - very very cool, thanks :)

Kevin: I suspect the gene-jocks have *way* too much fun coming up with cute gene names that make funny reading!

–Simon

Mark Boguski on February 1st, 2008 12:40 am:

When I published my “book report,” I sent Michael Crichton a reprint and I got an amusing letter back from him. I’ll try to find it and post a scan. The late Stephen J. Gould even commented on it. Again, I’ll try to find his correspondence and post it for you. -MB

Simon Greenhill on February 7th, 2008 12:11 am:

Mark, thanks for sharing those letters. I loved the Crichton anecdote - it’s great to see someone taking accuracy seriously! (& I’m a huge fan of Gould too)

–Simon