Craig Venter and Colleagues Develop Expressed Sequence Tags

In 1991 J. Craig Venter and colleagues at the National Institute of Health described a fast new approach to gene discovery using Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs). Although controversial when first introduced, ESTs were soon widely employed both in public and private sector research. They proved economical and versatile, used not only for rapid identification of new genes, but also for analyzing gene expression, gene families, and possible disease-causing mutations.