Somewhat ironically, he'd spent the last years of his life working on prolonging life [1], and was selling a $25,000 "proactive healthcare service" consultation to anyone who could afford it [2].
1: The company's website, humanlongevity dot com, seems to have been compromised, and as "captcha" will try to have you install a Trojan. So here's the Wikipedia page instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Longevity
Sad news. I met Craig very briefly at a conference probably a decade back. I pretty much was a self-study in genetics at the time... so let's just say I wasn't in Craig's league. Despite this he was had a very engaged and took the time for a very thoughtful chat.
apitman 55 minutes ago [-]
Craig Venter was famously involved in the Human Genome Project. He announced the first draft of the human genome alongside President Clinton and Francis Collins.
dnautics 51 minutes ago [-]
i believe he also was the human genome project, he arranged to have one of the samples be him
acmj 7 minutes ago [-]
You are confused by the human genome project vs the celera genome project. No, the human genome project didn't include his sample.
jltsiren 26 minutes ago [-]
Craig Venter had his genome sequenced in 2007. It was the first individual human genome that was sequenced and released publicly.
The human reference genome is ~70% from a man with African and European ancestry who lived somewhere around Buffalo, NY. Most of the rest is from ~20 other individuals in the same area. They were supposed to sequence the samples more evenly, but apparently there were some technical reasons that made them prioritize a single sample.
moralestapia 26 minutes ago [-]
Yes, his was the first complete genome ever sequenced (by a private entity).
schoen 7 minutes ago [-]
This reminds me of the interesting fact that
> Linnaeus is designated as the type specimen for the human species, Homo sapiens.
RIP Craig Venter, I remember being in 5th grade and hearing about the Human Genome project. It was presented as a radical undertaking. 30 years later, look how far we've come. Thank you Craig Venter!
rdl 58 minutes ago [-]
He was pretty shockingly an entrepreneur and inventor in all the best ways,’in a field dominated by very cautious scientists (who are great too, but who likely never would have gotten the genome sequenced within 10-20 years of when he did it). It was basically the Apollo Project in a field which was more like 1980s NASA in culture.
dnautics 50 minutes ago [-]
iiuc it was hamilton smith who insisted that shotgun sequencing would work. the nih side insisted on primer walking until celera started assembling the genome so rapidly that the nih had to get in on shotgun too
acmj 54 seconds ago [-]
No, the human genome from the NIH side was done by bac-to-bac, not by shotgun.
echelon 49 minutes ago [-]
> in a field dominated by very cautious scientists (who are great too, but who likely never would have gotten the genome sequenced within 10-20 years of when he did it).
I did a bio undergrad and one of my professors was involved. She was adamant that the Human Genome Project finished ahead of Celera and that the HGP published reference data that Venter and team fundamentally relied upon to even have their shotgun approach work.
dnautics 48 minutes ago [-]
i worked for ham smith and my understanding through him is that both sides relied on data that the other produced.
33 minutes ago [-]
jfengel 16 minutes ago [-]
That's unexpected. He was only 80, and as I understand it still working.
My his memory be a blessing.
kingsleyopara 35 minutes ago [-]
I went to a talk of his once and discovered that I also have aphantasia. Seemed like a genuinely nice guy the little I interacted with him. RIP
koeng 47 minutes ago [-]
I met Craig about a year ago or so at a synthetic biology conference. Even though his institute was the one which created the first synthetic cell, he pretty much just talked about how disappointing it was that we couldn't engineer the ribosome more. Was a funny memory :) guess you always want more once you do something great.
1: The company's website, humanlongevity dot com, seems to have been compromised, and as "captcha" will try to have you install a Trojan. So here's the Wikipedia page instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Longevity
2: https://fortune.com/2017/02/21/craig-venter-human-longevity/
The human reference genome is ~70% from a man with African and European ancestry who lived somewhere around Buffalo, NY. Most of the rest is from ~20 other individuals in the same area. They were supposed to sequence the samples more evenly, but apparently there were some technical reasons that made them prioritize a single sample.
> Linnaeus is designated as the type specimen for the human species, Homo sapiens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Linnaeus
I did a bio undergrad and one of my professors was involved. She was adamant that the Human Genome Project finished ahead of Celera and that the HGP published reference data that Venter and team fundamentally relied upon to even have their shotgun approach work.
My his memory be a blessing.