Discovery
While at the NIH, Venter learned of a technique for rapidly identifying all of the mRNAs present in a cell and began to use it to identify human brain genes. The short cDNA sequence fragments discovered by this method are called expressed sequence tags (ESTs), a name coined by Anthony Kerlavage at The Institute for Genomic Research. The NIH initially led an effort to patent these gene fragments, in which Venter coincidentally and controversially became involved. The NIH later withdrew the patent applications, following public outcry. Subsequent court cases declared that ESTs were not directly patentable.
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Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“I have known no experience more distressing than the discovery that Negroes didn’t love me. Unutterable loneliness claimed me. I felt without roots, like a man without a country ...”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 10 (1962)
“The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable—that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)