J. Craig Venter, 'swashbuckling' scientist who helped decode human genome, dies at 79

J. Craig Venter, one of many lead scientists in sequencing the human genome and a pioneer of contemporary genomics, died Wednesday, his analysis institute introduced.

He was 79.

The J. Craig Venter Institute mentioned in a press release that he died in San Diego after he was hospitalized due to issues associated to most cancers.

Venter was a revolutionary scientist who helped outline trendy genomics and persistently argued that scientific discovery ought to translate into “real-world affect,” his institute mentioned. He additionally performed a central position in launching the sector of artificial biology.

Venter was a Navy corpsman in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968. He later obtained a bachelor of science diploma in biochemistry and a Ph.D. in physiology and pharmacology from the College of California, San Diego.

His most influential work centered on genomics. Venter “helped transfer genomics from sluggish, gene-by-gene discovery to scalable data-driven science — after which helped take the following step: demonstrating that genomes may very well be designed and constructed.” his institute mentioned.

Venter led the hassle to provide one of many first draft sequences of the human genome. He later printed, with colleagues, the primary “high-quality” diploid human genome, highlighting the significance of capturing genetic variation inherited from each dad and mom.

A human genome is an individual’s full set of genetic data, saved as DNA throughout the nucleus of almost each cell within the physique, in accordance with the J. Craig Venter Institute.

Within the Nineties, Venter and a workforce on the Nationwide Institutes of Well being developed expressed sequence tags, which allowed for the fast discovery of recent genes.

In 1995, Venter and collaborators used “whole-genome shotgun sequencing” to unravel the DNA sequence of the primary free-living organism, the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae.

Venter then co-founded Celera Genomics in 1998.

His workforce at Celera entered a race in opposition to rivals to sequence the human genome. The first competitor was the NIH–backed Human Genome Mission, which was supported by each U.S. authorities funding and British analysis companions.

In 2000, when he was president of Celera, Venter and a public consortium introduced that they’d assembled the primary draft of the human genome, a significant milestone in organic science.

Along with his contributions to genomics, Venter led the World Ocean Sampling expedition in metagenomics, revealing extraordinary microbial range.

Scientists around the globe paid tribute to Venter and his extraordinary contributions to science.

“Craig Venter was a drive of nature and a vastly essential, although controversial, determine,” Sir John Hardy, professor of neuroscience at College Faculty London, mentioned in a press release. “The race to finish the human sequence was a testosterone pushed competitors between the US and UK consortia … there isn’t a doubt that this competitors speeded issues up enormously and it ended actually in a rating draw with each side publishing concurrently in Science and Nature.”

Dr. Roger Highfield, science director on the Science Museum Group, mentioned Venter was “a swashbuckling, stressed pioneer of genome sequencing and artificial biology.”

“I used to be emailing him only some weeks in the past a couple of new writing mission,” Highfield mentioned in a press release. “He talked about a brand new prognosis, however the information nonetheless got here as a shock. Craig was a divisive determine, however he had enormous chutzpah and was all the time pushed by the science.”

Venter obtained quite a few honors, together with the 2008 Nationwide Medal of Science, the 2002 Gairdner Basis Worldwide Award, the 2001 Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize and the King Faisal Worldwide Award for Science.