Obituary: Dr J Craig Venter

Dr J Craig Venter, a biologist and entrepreneur known for his role in the race to sequence the human genome, has died at age 79.

Dr Venter's for-profit company, Celera Genomics, entered a scientific race with the publicly funded Human Genome Project in 1998, attempting to be the first to sequence the human genome. Unlike its competitor, Celera relied on an approach known as whole genome shotgun sequencing, where the genetic information is broken into random small fragments which are then sequenced and reassembled in the correct order using supercomputers. In June 2000, both teams jointly announced having succeeded in producing the first draft of a human genome.

According to Dr Roger Highfield, science director at the Science Museum Group and editor of Dr Venter's autobiography: 'At a time when sequencing a single genome was scheduled to take many years and cost billions, Craig undoubtedly accelerated the race to the first human genome by years, not least by realising sequencing was a problem of computer power, not chemistry.'

Dr Venter was born in 1946 in Salt Lake City, Utah, and grew up in California. A lacklustre student but keen surfer, he served as a medical corpsman at a field hospital during the Vietnam War. The experience sparked his interest in biology: upon returning to the USA, he earned a biochemistry undergraduate degree and a doctorate in physiology and pharmacology from the University of California, San Diego. 

By 1984 he had joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and his attention had turned to the new field of DNA sequencing. There, he devised a method allowing researchers to quickly identify large numbers of expressed genes.

He left the NIH in 1992 to found the Institute for Genomic Research, where he continued to develop whole genome shotgun sequencing. In 1995, he demonstrated the benefits of the method by quickly sequencing, for the first time, the genome of a free-living organism – a bacterium responsible for childhood ear infections and meningitis.

Following his achievements with the human genome project, Dr Venter went on to lead a series of high-profile research initiatives, including at his newly founded J Craig Venter Institute. In 2007, he was the first to release the complete genome of a unique individual, using his own genetic information (see BioNews 424). The Global Ocean Sampling Expedition, launched in 2004, unveiled millions of new genes and protein families present in waters around the globe.

The J Craig Venter Institute also made strides in synthetic biology, announcing, in 2010, the creation of the first self-dividing bacterial cell whose genetic material had been entirely synthesised in a laboratory.

'Craig Venter was a force of nature and really an important though controversial figure', said former collaborator Professor Sir John Hardy, a group leader at the UK Dementia Research Institute at University College London.

In recent years, Dr Venter focused on ventures in the human health sector (see BioNews 745). He died on 29 April after being hospitalised for side effects of cancer treatment.