NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The J. Craig Venter Institute said today that it has reeled in a $2.5 million donation, which it plans to use to complete construction of a sustainable lab facility that is being built at the University of California, San Diego, campus in La Jolla, Calif.
JCVI said it received the funds from J. Robert Beyster and Betty J. Beyster, who previously helped support the institute's Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition, which collected samples of marine microbes from the Baltic, Mediterranean, and Black Seas for metagenomic analyses.
Construction on the sustainable lab began in early 2012. The facility, which will house research aimed at addressing global climate change and hydrocarbon dependence, was designed to be the first carbon-neutral lab facility in the world, according to JCVI.