Craig Venter’s life in genomics, from Vietnam to Genome 2.0

Craig Venter’s – J. Craig Venter, who died at the end of April at age 79, helped reshape human genomics and synthetic biology—publishing the first bacterial genome in 1995, helping announce the first fully sequenced human genome in 2001, and creating the first synthetic, self-

J. Craig Venter’s work built a kind of map for modern biology—one drawn with sequences. assemblies. and the stubborn belief that the right experiments can change what we think is possible. After the announcement of his death at the end of April. at age 79. tributes poured in. with obituaries and social media posts circling around two themes that never quite sat comfortably together: his towering influence on human genomics and synthetic biology. and the label of “controversial” that followed him for years.

Roger Highfield. a science journalist who knew Venter professionally—editing two of the geneticist’s books and writing about him over time—described him as a divisive presence with an unusual kind of drive. “Craig was a divisive figure but had huge chutzpah and was always driven on by the science,” Highfield said.

When MISRYOUM spoke with Venter over video about the state of American science just a month before his death. his energy came through as “swashbuckling. ” Highfield said. though softened by humility and thoughtfulness. Venter also veered into something closer to philosophy. The goal of living forever, he argued, was absurd. If you want immortality, he said, “do something meaningful while you’re alive.”.

For him, that urgency wasn’t abstract. Venter said his science career started outside academia—by being drafted and spending a year in Vietnam as a medic. learning that “fundamentally the biggest thing I had to lose was my life.” It was an early encounter with risk that he later translated into a lifelong approach to research: build. test. and keep going even when the outcome isn’t guaranteed.

That appetite for possibility helped create milestones that altered the scientific landscape. In 1995, Venter published the first bacterial genome sequence. Five years later. using a whole-genome shotgun-sequencing method he developed. Venter and the government-backed Human Genome Project announced the first fully sequenced human genome. He then shifted toward synthetic genomes, creating the first synthetic, self-replicating bacterial cell in 2010.

In the interview, the picture he painted of American science was not simply political—it was structural, and it felt, in his words, like the field was being tugged in multiple directions at once.

He described American science as being in “extreme flux for all kinds of reasons. not just political.” Artificial intelligence. he said. had entered the scene in a way that was influencing how people think about the future of science. He didn’t dismiss it outright—he called it affecting expectations—but he also warned that it is “a little bit overhyped.” When the first synthetic cell was created. about a quarter of the genes had “completely unknown function.” In Venter’s view. AI couldn’t reliably identify those functions because. if the genes aren’t part of the training set. they “doesn’t exist in its world.” He pushed back on the common story that AI can “design new genomes” or “design whole new things” outside its repertoire.

Still, Venter insisted that limits don’t end inquiry. Humans, he said, have a unique ability to assemble solutions from missing pieces—something he believed he was good at, taking complex concepts and finding what comes next, and figuring out what has to be solved.

The flux, he added, isn’t only intellectual. Funding, competition, and international politics are reshaping how science gets done. He argued that science now depends on open, candid communication across countries and open movement of people. In U.S. hospitals. he said. that openness has been constrained: intern and resident pipelines that traditionally drew heavily from overseas have been blocked. leaving “huge wait times.” The same problem. he said. applies to science with postdocs and graduate students—new talent arriving later. or not arriving at all.

That matters because, in his view, young scientists are the fuel the future runs on. “This is the fuel that feeds the future of science—new young blood coming in and getting educated and excited about the future.” He said the U.S. was “shooting ourselves in the foot” while also facing intense competition. In synthetic biology, he pointed to a gap he described bluntly: China is outspending the U.S. “10 or 15 to one.”.

He said change is needed in American science, but not as a vague wish. Venter returned to an older argument, grounded in the moment when his team’s ideas first met institutional resistance. He cited 1995. when Hamilton Smith—then a Nobel laureate—co-wrote a grant with him. submitted to the NIH. proposing shotgun sequencing to sequence the first genome in history. The NIH, Venter said, turned the idea down “with extreme prejudice.”.

He framed what happened next as a kind of tragedy of timing and risk: his group believed the mathematics would work. that assembly would work. and that the genome sequencing would succeed—yet funding for that risk never came through. Venter said he wrote a letter to Francis Collins. who he described as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the NIH at the time. saying. “You should consider funding this just so the NIH won’t be embarrassed when. after you turn it down. we go ahead and are first in history.” He added that he still has the letter he received back. in which NIH officials “totally stand by their decision” and were “certain that it won’t work.” A short time later. Venter said. the first sequence of the full genome was published.

From there, he argued the deeper problem wasn’t just whether the government funds genomics—it was how it decides which risks get supported.

When asked whether government agencies should financially support these types of endeavors. Venter said that once an idea is proven correct. funding follows. But. he said. that “isn’t how science works at its best.” He argued that scientists should be funded for new ideas and allowed to take risks to reach those new ideas faster. And he said the public should be upset about the gap between ambition and outcomes: the American people should be “outraged that they’re not getting 10 times the discoveries that they are getting. because we don’t fund new ideas.”.

He pointed to a moment during NIH leadership when high-risk research was discussed in a formal way. He said that several years earlier, NIH director Elias A. Zerhouni wanted to form a special award for high-risk research. and asked molecular biologist and Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner and Venter to head a committee to recommend candidates. Venter said the committee produced 10 top candidates. But. he said. NIH decided they were all too risky and didn’t want to give them the award for high-risk research because it sent “the wrong message.”.

What’s missing, he argued, is more space for young scientists to take those risks—try things, get rewarded, or learn from failure. “I know a lot because I failed so many times that I’ve learned more from the failures than from the successes.”

Advice to early-career scientists came straight from that philosophy. “You have to take risks,” he said. If you’re risk averse, you’re in the wrong field. Doing an experiment, he added, is “the definition of doing an experiment,” because you don’t know the outcome.

He connected that risk-taking instinct to Vietnam again—not as a dramatic flourish. but as the origin story for a life aimed at honoring people he felt were misunderstood. He said he wanted to apply his skill set to “honoring the thousands of young men and women my age fighting in a war that almost nobody believed in.” He went back to school. he said. to get an education and try to do something meaningful with his life.

Still, he didn’t let the conversation end in gloom. He said he was optimistic about science and innovation in the U.S., even if it looks bleak. “Things seem bleak. ” he said. “but currently we’re still hanging on. maybe by a tooth. to leading the world in science.” He attributed that edge in large part to philanthropy and the U.S. institutions and ways of thinking he said were unique.

He said some people imagine government funding is the backbone. but government money is. in his telling. more about building infrastructure—indirect costs. infrastructure that keeps the lights on and people paid. “Without [funding for] indirect costs. I can’t pay for my building. my electricity. the human resources people. anything.” In his view. it is a combination of government and philanthropic funding that keeps momentum alive because people believe in putting money in science.

He also pointed to the excitement around new computing tools. He said computers would become more powerful than many people can easily imagine. And he made the leap from computing power to a key genomics promise that had been years in the making: the field. he said. can now start again “the right way.”.

What does “the right way” mean?. Venter said that 25 years earlier. researchers had dreams—then geneticists leaned into an idea that changes at a single nucleotide base would explain everything in the genetic code. He said they were wrong. Over 25 years, he said, it became clear how faulty that notion was.

He argued that NIH funding choices focused on sequencing more genomes rather than understanding the complete set of observable traits. Sequencing more genomes. he said. helps with ancestry and history—but it doesn’t reveal the shape of someone’s face. the spectrum of how a person’s brain will function. or genetic susceptibility tied to environmental interactions. disease. or wellness.

This is where Venter said AI could help. He described a future in which all the information known about an individual could be related back to their genome—something he said tools will enable far faster. “tens. hundreds of thousands. millions of times faster as the tools get better.” The tools still have to be developed. he said. but the possibility makes him optimistic. What they dreamed about 25 years ago is now doable.

When asked how AI and new technology changed genomics recently. he said the shift has been in the mathematics and the AI itself. calling it a fundamental change in computing. He described personal history in the computing arc as well: in 1999. he built the third-largest civilian computer in the world. one capable of one and a half teraflops and filling two giant rooms. Now, he said, a laptop can be more powerful than that.

With that computing power—memory. large language models. and other new tools—Venter said the field can find associations humans can’t easily discern by eye. He said genomics used to produce fragments, but now it can capture complete genomes. With that comes deeper ways of understanding family biology: he said it’s possible to understand a person’s mother’s genome and father’s genome. which he described as the diploid genome.

In January. Venter said he started a company called Diploid Genomics. Inc. to deploy genomics to understand humanity at its most basic level. and that the project is being called “genome 2.0.” He added that he “never thought it would take 25 years to get here. ” even as he acknowledged that some things move more slowly than others.

Venter’s story sits at the intersection of speed and skepticism. His legacy is made of sequences and synthetic cells. but in his final interview. he was also fighting for the conditions that make those breakthroughs possible—open movement of people. funding that takes risks before success is guaranteed. and young scientists who aren’t trained to be afraid of the unknown. The controversy around him never stopped his momentum. It just sharpened the questions his work forced the world to answer.

Craig Venter human genomics synthetic biology Human Genome Project shotgun sequencing synthetic cell AI and genomics Diploid Genomics Genome 2.0 NIH Francis Collins Vietnam medic