SAN DIEGO _ J. Craig Venter has been reappointed chief executive officer of Human Longevity Inc., replacing Cynthia Collins, the genomics health intelligence company said Friday.
In addition, Saturnino "Nino" Fanlo, its chief financial officer, has been named chief operations officer, the company said in a statement.
Human Longevity didn't specify the conditions under which Collins left the company, which she joined in January.
The departure was accompanied by several other of the company's senior management, according to Fortune, which originally reported on the shakeup.
Human Longevity said it is "streamlining" its efforts in favor of focusing on Health Nucleus, its clinical research arm.
Health Nucleus uses genomics and other advanced technologies to map the health of individuals, giving them early warning of major diseases. The goal is to increase the "healthspan," or healthy lifespan.
Venter first came into worldwide prominence as the leader of a private effort to map the human genome for the first time. Since then, he has helped set up other entities, including a nonprofit biomedical research organization called the J. Craig Venter Institute, and the for-profit companies Human Longevity and Synthetic Genomics.
In 2010, Venter and colleagues attracted global attention when they announced successful use of a chemically synthesized genome in a bacterial cell that had been deprived of its natural genome. The cell "booted" up and proceeded to replicate with the synthesized genome.
Last year, Venter and fellow scientists announced a descendant of that life form with a genome nearly half that of the original. The genome was smaller than that found in any natural independently replicating organism.
A Venter-led study with Human Longevity colleagues published in September came under criticism from fellow scientists. They said the study made an exaggerated claim that individual facial features could be predicted from the human genome.
Human Longevity replied that the study properly qualified its conclusions as representing a relatively small?????? sample, emphasizing that many more genomes would needed for more precise predictions.
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