Jacques Ravel in the New York Times

I'm back from Australia (although jet-lagged), and looking through the NYT science articles that I'd missed over the past week and a half, I discovered this article about the techniques used to establish that the mailed anthrax powder that killed photo editor Robert Stevens in 2001 was from the RMR-1029 strain (indirectly suggesting Bruce Ivins as the culprit, although the article stresses that is still as yet unproven, despite Ivins' suicide). 

It's a very interesting article, but I have to admit that what drew me in initially was the photo of my former TIGR colleague Jacques Ravel - while articles featuring Craig Venter are too common to mention these days, it's nice to see some coverage of other people I've worked with.

RIP TIGR (1992-2007)

Well, it's official -- TIGR is no more. We had an "all hands meeting" today and Craig informed us that the TIGR name has been officially retired (as has that of the lesser known TCAG, or The Center for the Advancement of Genomics, which had been the "traditional" J, Craig Venter Institute). We are all now employees of the J. Craig Venter Institute. Even our e-mail will be at jcvi.org and not tigr.org. Personally, I don't understand the rationale behind Craig's reasoning -- TIGR means something to the scientific community, and with the possible exception of the recent Global Ocean Survey, the J. Craig Venter Institute is an unknown quantity. But hey, what do I know? In other news, the much rumored "flat organization" that would bring faculty and staff scientists to equality turned out to be just that -- a rumor. I had mixed feelings about that one, anyway. As a staff scientist, I of course would like to move up in the social scale, but I realize that many faculty would be alienated by such a move. TIGR (er, the JCVI) is hemorrhaging enough faculty as it is.