J. Craig Venter

AMERICAN BIOLOGIST

Prominent genomics researcher and entrepreneur, J. Craig Venter was recognized for a wide array of accomplishments that included the first complete sequencing of the human genome, as well as his 2010 creation of the first self-replicating bacterial cell with synthetic DNA.

PRIMARY FIELD: Biology

SPECIALTIES: Genetics; biochemistry

Early Life

John Craig Venter was born on October 14, 1946, in Salt Lake City, Utah, but he spent his childhood in the city of Millbrae, California. He was the second of four children born to John and Elizabeth Venter, who were both members of the United States Marine Corps during World War II.

As a child, Venter was a self-described mischief-maker who loved playing around the railroad tracks near his house. He displayed a strong mechanical and engineering ability, excelling at such projects. Venter was an exceptionally competitive swimmer but did not shine academically. At Mills High School, where he enrolled in 1960, he was rebellious, bored, and frequently in trouble. (In 2007, when his genome became the first individual human genome to be completely sequenced, Venter would discover a possible explanation for his behavior: a genetic anomaly associated with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.)

At seventeen, Venter dropped out of high school and moved alone to Costa Mesa, California, but was soon drafted into the military. He enlisted in the United States Navy and began serving as a senior corpsman in a field hospital in Da Nang, South Vietnam. The exposure to death and critical injury had a profound impact on him, and when Venter returned to the United States in 1968, he began taking steps toward a medical career. Venter first took classes at the College of San Mateo, a community college in California, and later he was accepted as a student at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).

In 1972, he received his BS degree in biochemistry and remained at UCSD to pursue graduate studies. He earned a PhD in physiology and pharmacology in 1975. By this time, his ambitions had turned from practicing medicine to laboratory research. His doctoral dissertation focused on how the hormone adrenaline interacts with cells.

Life’s Work

After completing his doctorate, Venter accepted a position as a junior faculty member at the medical school of the State University of New York. In 1982, he became the deputy director of the molecular immunology department at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Venter joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a government research body based in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1984. It was during his tenure there that the focus of his work turned toward genetic sequencing.

Genetic sequencing is the attempt to map out the structure and function of the chemical building blocks, or base pairs, that form strands of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). DNA is the carrier of the genetic instructions that drive the development of most living organisms. A DNA base pair consists of either a molecule of cytosine paired with one of guanine, or a molecule of adenine paired with one of thymine. These bases are abbreviated with the letters A, T, C, and G; a sequenced genome looks like a series of letters, such as “CCAAGTAC.”

One of Venter’s early projects was the development of so-called expressed sequence tags (ESTs). An EST consists of a small, unique sequence of DNA, a few hundred base pairs in length. This sequence is a portion of a gene that expresses, or contains instructions for producing, a particular protein. By matching ESTs to a longer stretch of genomic information, researchers can quickly identify full-length genes that serve known functions.

In 1992, Venter left the NIH to start his own nonprofit research foundation, the Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR). TIGR made the news in 1995 when it published the first complete genome sequence belonging to a free-living organism—that of Haemophilus influenzae, a bacterium that causes various human infections. Although others had managed to sequence virus genomes completely, Haemophilus influenzae was a much more complex organism. Venter’s success in mapping all of its base pairs in one year was considered remarkable.

Venter had sequenced the bacterium genome using a technique known as “shotgun sequencing.” At the time, the traditional method of DNA-sequencing relied on sequencing large chunks of a genome, cloning them in bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs), a type of engineered DNA molecule, and breaking those down again into smaller pieces. Only after every piece has been sequenced could they be fitted back together. This technique is highly accurate but expensive and time-consuming. Venter’s much faster and cheaper shotgun technique breaks a genome into much smaller pieces, which can be sequenced and aligned simultaneously.

In 1998, Venter founded a private company called Celera Genomics. Celera’s main goal was to speed up the completion of the sequencing of the entire human genome. This information would provide a database for medical researchers in developing diagnostic tests for diseases based on genetic markers, as well as personalized therapies targeting specific genetic anomalies. The publicly funded Human Genome Project, which consisted of a consortium of international research groups, had been working on this endeavor since 1990 but continued to use the BAC-to-BAC technique. Venter believed the shotgun method would provide a quicker and less expensive solution.

In 2000, what had been a very visible and sometimes contentious race between the public and private sectors to map the complete human genome ended on a collaborative note, with Venter and Francis Collins of the Human Genome Project jointly announcing that both groups had finished draft sequences. It was generally accepted that Celera “won” the race, since its draft was completed several months before that of the Human Genome Project. In the years that followed, Celera scientists would go on to publish the genomes of other organisms, including the mouse and the fruit fly.

Leaving Celera in 2002, Venter threw himself into the field of synthetic biology: the attempt to build living biological systems using standardized parts, such as DNA sequences, proteins, and other organic compounds. Among other projects, Venter was sailing around the world collecting undersea microbes to help build a library of organic building blocks. In 2010, he made the headlines again for creating the first living cell with an entirely synthetic genome. He continued to work on cutting-edge genomics research at the J. Craig Venter Institute, the merged incarnation of several organizations he had founded previously. The institute had facilities in Rockville, Maryland, and La Jolla, California. In 2022, Venter sold the California facility, with plans to move to a larger facility at a future date.

In 2014, Venter founded a company known as Human Longevity Inc. (HLI), searching for ways to extend the human life span. To collect data for this project, rather than going through traditional clinical trials, he conducted extensive physicals combined with genetic sequencing on paying customers who hope that the many tests will detect issues such as cancer in the early stages. Venter announced his retirement from the company in 2018 and stepped down as CEO. The company then accused him of stealing trade secrets and filed a lawsuit against him. However, that suit was dismissed in December 2018.

Venter published a paper in 2017 claiming that the genetic data collected by companies such as 23andMe and Ancestry.com could be used to identify an individual with a high degree of accuracy, though the stored data is supposed to be anonymized. This led to controversy, as some accused Venter of distorting facts in order to serve his own business interests.

Venter has been married three times. He has one child, Christopher Emrys Rae Venter, with his former wife Barbara Rae. He lived in San Diego, California.

Impact

Venter has received numerous scientific prizes and awards, including the National Medal of Science in 2008. He has twice been named as one of Time magazine’s most influential people in the world. Many of the tools he has worked on developing or promoting are now widely used throughout biological research. The EST technique for rapid gene identification, for instance, has been used to pinpoint the genes involved in several human diseases, including Alzheimer’s and a particular form of colon cancer. The initially controversial technique of shotgun sequencing is, more recently, a conventional tool of genomics. Most current approaches to whole-genome sequencing use some hybrid form of shotgun and BAC-to-BAC sequencing.

Although Venter’s bacterium with a synthetic genome was not, as it was sometimes described, the first “synthetic life,” it represented a step toward a host of potential applications. The ability to design and manipulate pieces of genetic code like building blocks could enable the creation of clean, renewable sources of alternative energy, self-repairing materials, or highly effective vehicles for drug-delivery. Because of the potential for the tools of synthetic biology to be used in harmful ways, Venter’s announcement prompted President Barack Obama to create a bioethics commission to study the regulatory implications of this field.

Bibliography

“About J. Craig Venter Institute." J. Craig Venter Institute, 2024, www.jcvi.org/about/overview.  Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Biello, David, and Katherine Harmon. “Tools for Life: What’s Next for Cells Powered by Synthetic Genomes?” Scientific American303.2 (2010): 17–18. Print.

Herper, Matthew. "Craig Venter Mapped the Genome. Now He's Trying to Decode Death." Forbes, 28 Feb. 2017, www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2017/02/21/can-craig-venter-cheat-death/. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Hess, Peter. "Why Science Turned on the DNA Mogul Championing Genetic Privacy." Inverse Science, 4 Oct. 2017, www.inverse.com/article/36584-craig-venter-genome-dna-privacy-yaniv-erlich. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Lesk, Arthur M. Introduction to Genomics. New York: Oxford UP, 2007. Print.

Pennisi, Elizabeth. “Synthetic Genome Brings New Life to Bacterium.” Science 21 (2010): 958–59. Print.

Robbins, Gary. “Geneticist Craig Venter Sells His La Jolla Research Center to UC San Diego for $25 million." San Diego Union Tribune, 27 Apr. 2022, www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2022/04/27/geneticist-craig-venter-sells-his-la-jolla-research-center-to-uc-san-diego-for-25-million-2/.  Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Robbins, Rebecca. “Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Accusing Craig Venter of Stealing Trade Secrets." STAT, 19 Dec. 2018, www.statnews.com/2018/12/19/judge-dismisses-lawsuit-accusing-craig-venter-of-stealing-trade-secrets/.  Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Shreeve, James. The Genome War: How Craig Venter Tried to Capture the Code of Life and Save the World. New York: Knopf, 2004. Print.

Venter, J. Craig. A Life Decoded: My Genome, My Life. New York: Penguin, 2007. Print.