Woah - I just drove by the JCV institute in La Jolla yesterday and felt thinking that the organization was really monumental to synthetic biology. Rest in peace
Craig Venter has died
81–90 of 90 posts
Re: Craig Venter has died
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
i believe he also was the human genome project, he arranged to have one of the samples be him
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…
The majority of the genomic sequencing done by Celera for their initial released draft genome was on Venter's sample.
Re: Craig Venter has died
#83This is (specifically) unfortunate - let me explain why. Some comments are critical of Craig; this may be understandable as he always liked having media focus on either his personality or on what he is/was doing. Craig was, in my opinion, mostly a business person first, scientist second, but I think he was also genuinely fascinated and interested in science. Others already brought the example of the human genome proj…
The way I describe it is that his actions (even before the human genome) clearly showed that the individual-driven, "artisinal" sequencing was far less productive.
When I started in computational biology (1994) the E.Coli genome was not even done, and there was one lab doing the work, very slowly. You'd FTP to some server every week or so and download a few more kilobytes. It really felt like slow science (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_science). Venter helped convince people (Lander was another) that sequencing was an industrial process that could be accelerated significantly.
Re: Craig Venter has died
#84At the time they announced the full genome sequence I was an intern in molecular biology. We had a thermocycler in the lab and I had to book my slot on a paper agenda. I remember this portrait of him in front of multiple racks each plenty of thermocyclers. He taught me something about scale and he proved that sometimes it's worth looking at what you have and ask what if I could 200x this. In software this might seem…
I'm in lab automation, we've come a long way from paper schedules (although those still get plenty of use :) )
Re: Craig Venter has died
#85A world-class (and possibly universe-class) egotist who published the first diploid human genome sequence. It was his own DNA. He did not stop at broadcasting his achievement to a human audience: "Since my own genome was sequenced, my software has been broadcast into space in the form of electromagnetic waves, carrying my genetic information far beyond Earth."
I can't think of a better manifestation of the biological male imperitive.
Re: Craig Venter has died
#86I read his autobiography. Besides the genome work, which undoutedly was of historical importance, one thing that impressed me the most, was how he slept on the surgery table in the opersting room after cleaning blood from it in Vietnam. Somehow it was safer than in the barracks. I was like wow, this guy definitely knew how to think outside the box!
Re: Craig Venter has died
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only 79… far from a complete human experience. It’s incredibly sad how little time we get here, especially the best of us.
What is sad is having a world view where the value of a human life is duration, not accomplishment.
If you value accomplishment, then adding more years to accomplish more things is a no-brainer
Re: Craig Venter has died
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is sad is having a world view where the value of a human life is duration, not accomplishment.
If you value accomplishment, then adding more years to accomplish more things is a no-brainer
There is absolutely zero proof that more years would mean more accomplishments. Bad assumptions are bad assumptions even in fantasy land. No-brainer indeed.
Re: Craig Venter has died
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Only 79… far from a complete human experience It seems you’re judging his life solely on the age when he died rather than all the things he did.
Imagine what a guy like that could do with 79 more years... or 10x of that. It's not that outlandish: sharks, turtles, etc get far more years than we do. It's shocking all billionaires aren't devoting all their resources to solving this cosmic crime against humanity.
Thiel might be, but Thiel is also someone who gets infinitely mocked
With that having been said a lot of the health industry is fraud
Re: Craig Venter has died
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know it's cliche, but if he knew he (any of us) knew we might live to 790, would we live life so fully? I kind of think that's what is behind some people versus others—those that have an intrinsic, constant sense of the brevity of life are the ones that try to experience life to the fullest.
Yes. A lot of people would live life so fully if they knew they had 790 years: in fact more so. Right now the most ambitious projects people start barely scratch a decade or two.
They might be less willing to get on a sail boat where they could be swept off and nearly drown.