About the Author: Arri Eisen
Arri Eisen is a Senior Lecturer in Biology for Emory University's Center for Ethics and co-editor of Science, Religion, and Society: History, Cultures, and Controversies (M. E. Sharpe, 2007). His Science in Your Life radio spots, which aired on Atlanta's NPR affiliate, can be found here.
‘Creation of a bacterial cell controlled by a chemically synthesized genome’ is the title of the paper. It was published in the prestigious journal Science and came out of the Craig Venter Institute. Venter is the scientist whose name always comes connected to the word ‘maverick’; he’s the one who first made his name by bringing big private dollars into molecular biotechnology to compete with the federal government and speed up the sequencing of the first human genome (that is, the determination of the identity and order of all the billions of DNA base pairs in one human). The title here is certainly in keeping with Venter’s bodaciousness.