(October 14, 2013 at 12:52 pm)popeyespappy Wrote: I would like to think the latter. As far as remaining silent Venter has some impressive credentials as a scientist. However his primary concern for the past several years have been more business related than technical. He has people that do the science. He just worries about the money. As such it could be he is just trying not to step on too many toes. Which shouldn't be too hard as I believe he is more or less retired now and spends most of his time sailing around the world.Well, at least he's making fewer postdocs miserable- he has a HORRIBLE reputation, although I am impressed by his minimal genome work- it's something I have tinkered with in far easier viral systems, and it's a headache.
It's true that the tree of life one sees in textbooks is really outdated- the relationships between organisms are far more complex than the traditional idea of a tree supports. I don't see any compelling evidence that the differences in nucleotide structure of some bacteria necessarily point to anything other than common descent, but wouldn't it be thrilling to see evidence that multiple types of nucleotides arose independently! If Venter isn't willing to argue the case, I don't see anyone else taking it on, though.