Overview
- The J. Craig Venter Institute announced his death in San Diego at 79 after a hospital stay linked to side effects from cancer treatment.
- Through his company Celera, he challenged the public Human Genome Project with a quicker but less precise sequencing method and later shared results that helped accelerate the first complete map.
- Before that rivalry, he led work that decoded the first bacterial genome in 1995 and contributed to the fruit fly genome in 2000.
- In 2010 he reported a synthesized genome that took over a bacterium’s functions, prompting fresh bioethics debate about claims of “creating life.”
- He received the Nierenberg Prize in 2007 and the National Medal of Science in 2009, and vaccine leader Rino Rappuoli credits his genomics tools with enabling reverse vaccinology and a meningococcal B vaccine used worldwide.