Craig Venter, genome sequencing pioneer, dies at 79

Geneticist Craig Venter, who led the private effort to sequence the human genome and sparked controversy with his brash style, has died at age 79, his family confirmed.

At the BioVision conference in Lyon in February 2001, Venter announced that humans possess far fewer genes than previously thought — about 30,000, not 100,000 — and argued this disproved biological determinism.

“We simply do not have enough genes for this idea of biological determinism to be right,” Venter said. “The wonderful diversity of the human species is not hard-wired in our genetic code. Our environments are critical.”

The announcement came days before the journals Nature and Science were to publish the first draft of the human genome, based on work by a public consortium and Venter’s company, Celera Genomics.

BioVision 2001 had been arranged to unveil the results later in the conference, but Venter’s early disclosure upended the carefully coordinated rollout and drew sharp criticism from rivals.

When asked by a journalist whether he knew the results were under embargo, Venter replied: “It might be their embargo but it wasn’t mine.” His remarks made front pages worldwide.

A brilliant entrepreneur and unapologetic self-promoter, Venter enjoyed flaunting his private plane, yacht and flashy watches — traits that made him many enemies.

James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA’s double helix, compared Venter to Hitler for trying to patent human genes. Others nicknamed him “Darth Venter.”

Yet some colleagues were more forgiving. Sir John Hardy, a neuroscientist at University College London who collaborated with Venter on dementia research, said the rivalry between Celera and public scientists “speeded things up enormously and ended really in a score draw.”

Venter was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Oct. 14, 1946, to John and Elisabeth Venter, both former U.S. Marines. He grew up in Millbrae, California, and attended Mills High School, where he had a poor academic record.

After turning down a swimming scholarship to Arizona State University, he spent time in Southern California pursuing “drink, girls and bodysurfing,” as he wrote in his autobiography, “A Life Decoded.” His carefree years ended with the Vietnam War.

Venter enlisted in the Naval Hospital Corps and served as a senior corpsman in Da Nang. “I witnessed several hundred soldiers die, more often than not while I was massaging their hearts,” he recalled. “Vietnam would teach me more than I ever wanted to know about the fragility of life.”

The war sparked his interest in life sciences. He earned a PhD in physiology and pharmacology from the University of California, San Diego, in 1975.

In 1992, Venter co-founded the Institute for Genomics Research (later the J. Craig Venter Institute) in Gaithersburg, Maryland. In 1995, his team produced the first genome sequence of a living organism, the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae, using whole genome shotgun sequencing.

He founded Celera Genomics in 1998 to apply the same method to the human genome, contrasting with the slower, public-sector approach. A truce was celebrated at a White House ceremony in June 2000, drafts were published the next February.

Venter later disclosed that much of the DNA used by Celera came from his own cells, angering scientists who felt he had subverted standard donor selection. “I’ve been accused of that so many times, I’ve got over it,” he responded. He added that his DNA revealed an abnormal fat metabolism and elevated Alzheimer’s risk, prompting him to take fat-lowering drugs.

Later in 2001, Venter was fired as Celera’s CEO by Applera president Tony White, who wanted to shift the company toward drug discovery. Venter used his $100 million payoff to endow the J. Craig Venter Institute.

There he pursued projects such as designing energy-producing microbes and synthesizing bacterial genomes. He later founded Human Longevity and Diploid Genomics to combine AI with aging research and gene sequencing.

Venter’s claim that low gene counts proved the environment’s overriding role in human behavior has been questioned. Sir John Sulston, a leader of the U.K.’s public genome effort, countered that nature simply makes genes do more sophisticated management work as organisms become more complex.

Venter was married three times. He had a son, Christopher, from his first marriage to Barbara Rae. His second marriage to biologist Claire Fraser ended in 2005. He married Heather Kowalski, his former press officer, in 2008. She survives him, along with his son and siblings Keith, Gary and Suzanne.