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Video
Do you have a God complex?
Quite the opposite. The more we study life and the diversity and complexity of it, I’m constantly humbled. It’s only because of the way the public perceives and has been introduced to concepts of life by religion that makes this work seem more extraordinary than it actually is. We’re at the early stages of groundbreaking in a new field and we have a very long way to go. I don’t think there is anything God-like about what we do.
—Drew Toal
Venter discusses his new book, A Life Decoded, on Thu 7 at the American Museum of Natural History.
[Editor’s note: Extended interview]
What are you working on now?
We just reported the first synthetic chromosome for the code for bacteria but we have not yet been able to activate that chromosome in the cell. So right now we’ve accomplished the chemistry and we’re working on the next stage of trying to boot that up.
What’s the next step after that?
The next step is trying to answer some of the fundamental questions that we set out to do with this. You know, basic fundamentals of biology, but we want to see if we can apply it to seeing if we can develop new cell types that can produce fuels: second- and third-generation biofuels, for example. Ways to produce chemicals, ways to clean up the environment; they’re all possible applications.
How close are we to developing this kind of alternative fuel?
I doubt that it will be hydrogen. It will be something chemically similar to gasoline and jet fuel, and I think that’s likely to happen.… We already have cells that do that so it’s a question of whether we can scale up the production for the levels that are needed.
Can you really patent certain DNA sequences?
Well, very few people are patenting DNA sequences. There is not much value in that unless it’s something that codes for a specific drug, like insulin. What we’re patenting is all the new methodology that we’ve developed from making the sequences, and also the structures of the genomes in the cells that might produce something to replace taking oil out of the ground, I think, will be extremely valuable. But companies like Amgen and Genentech, they have patents on a few human genes, but it’s not the standard. But patents play a key role in commerce; it’s hard to have it without them.
ow much of your recent boat trip was scientifically motivated, and how much was to get away from the fallout from the much-publicized Human Genome Race?
Oh, the whole purpose of the sailing trip was to do new science and to explore the world. The politics and the political nature of how some people behave don’t affect much in reality. It’s more of a nuisance than anything else, and that mostly stopped eight years ago, once we published the first genome. It’s always nice sailing out on the ocean, though. It clears your head of all kinds of crap.
Where would you rank your accomplishments among history’s great scientists?
I would rate my accomplishments… It’s probably nowhere on the magnitude of long-term impact. You know, my team has certainly put more new genes and genetic information into the public domain than any other group. We’ve led the sequencing of the human genome after doing the first genomes in history. And now we’re on our way to try and start this new field of synthetic life. We’re still going. I’m not ready for history to judge me yet. With biology, it’s the cumulative knowledge that you get through your life and your career that really helps you through the next stages. I think that’s why the accomplishments of my team just keep getting better. I have people like Ham Smith, the Nobel laureate, who is in his midseventies, who works every day at the lab. He’s done some of the best work in his career since his Nobel Prize. We’re trying to prove that there is a totally different model for intellectual activity in research. People that peak early in their careers, I feel sorry for them.
