J. Craig Venter, Pioneer in Human Genome Sequencing, Dies at 79

J. Craig Venter, who pioneered the sequencing of the human genome and created the first synthetic species, died on Wednesday at the age of 79. The J. Craig Venter Institute announced that Venter died in San Diego after being hospitalized for side effects from a recent cancer treatment.

The institute stated he died following a brief hospitalization for unexpected side effects from treatment of recently diagnosed cancer. S. Navy during Vietnam, where he worked as a war orderly after being conscripted.

He said the experience taught him how fragile life could be and made him curious about how the trillions of cells in the human body conspire to create and maintain life. By the 1980s, Venter was working as a biomedical researcher for the National Institutes of Health. There, he helped develop a technique to quickly identify large swathes of human genes.

In the 1990s, Venter bet that he could use a different sequencing technique to speed up decoding the human genome and beat the Human Genome Project. In 1995, Venter used shotgun sequencing to sequence an entire bacterial genome.

In 1998, he founded Celera, a commercial company. 1 billion sub-units of DNA. The publicly funded and commercial genome teams announced draft sequences that year.

At a White House event in 2000, Venter said, 'Some have said to me that sequencing the human genome will diminish humanity by taking the mystery out of life. In 2001, the Human Genome Project published its results in Nature. That same year, Venter’s team published their results in Science.

In April 2003, the Human Genome Project declared the genome complete. Venter was the first to publish his own sequenced genome. From 2004 to 2006, Venter used his yacht Sorcerer II to circumnavigate the globe and collect seawater samples.

His team sequenced DNA from these samples, discovering millions of proteins, including over 1000 new families. In 2010, Venter's team created the first synthetic species, a bacteria designed with man-made DNA. The team built a synthetic cell using an artificial genome inserted into Mycoplasma capricolum.

The synthetic cell was based on Mycoplasma mycoides. Venter's team added their names into the synthetic genome. Venter's team edited the synthetic creation to strip away non-essential genes for a minimal genome.

The J. Craig Venter Institute has locations in La Jolla, California, and Rockville, Maryland.