The J. Craig Venter Institute named Anders Dale president on Saturday, four days after its founder died at 79 in San Diego. [1] The institute's statement requested family privacy, said memorial arrangements were pending, and pledged the research program would continue without interruption. [1]

The paper's Friday obituary read Venter's death against the federal-science register being decommissioned in pieces. Saturday's succession is the inverse of that register. The National Science Board's twenty-two members were dismissed by a single email on April 24; nine days later no replacements have been named. [2] JCVI lost its founder on Tuesday and named a successor by Saturday morning.

Dale, a neuroscientist with appointments at UC San Diego and a long collaboration on the institute's brain-mapping program, was on the institute's leadership team before the death. [1] The 96-hour turnaround signals what continuity looks like when the instrument is private — a board, a will, and a press release. The instrument the United States built around the National Science Foundation does not turn that way. The Arthrex remedy, as Duke Law's Jeff Powell has noted, does not match the Trump administration's firing rationale; the legal architecture for federal-board continuity assumes someone wants the boards to continue. [3]

JCVI did. The federal counterpart, this week, did not.

-- KENJI NAKAMURA, San Diego