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Craig Venter, the scientist who read the human genome and created artificial life, dies

2026-04-30 17:47:10Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Craig Venter, the scientist who read the human genome and created artificial
Craig Venter

He smiled inwardly when he was accused of playing God. Craig Venter, an American biologist, had always sought to challenge official science.

One of his latest ventures was the creation of the Genomic X Prize, an award for the researcher who discovered the secret of longevity in the DNA of centenarians.

For him personally, this research was of no use. Venter died yesterday at the age of 79 at his home in La Jolla, California. The announcement was made by the J. Craig Venter Institute, the private research center he founded, writes La Repubblica.

He had recently been hospitalized for the aftereffects of cancer treatment. The first of his successful ventures involved human DNA. In the 1990s, when the US government was undertaking the sequencing of our species’ entire genome, he barged in without knocking, accused his colleagues of slowness and inefficiency—the estimated cost was about $3 billion—and launched a parallel project.

With his funding, equipment, and scientists, Venter demonstrated that the result could be achieved with new and faster methods. So much so that the complete sequencing of our DNA, which occurred in 2000, still bears dual authorship: both Venter and his private company Celera, and the government Human Genome Project.

“It was a fundamental step towards discovering the genetic basis of disease and human origins,” the Venter Institute recalled today in its final farewell to its founder. It was only the beginning of his challenge. In the 1990s, Venter began planning the creation of artificial life.

He wanted to assemble a bacterium in the lab, assembling its DNA piece by piece like a Lego toy. In 2010, through the journal Science – the pinnacle of prestige and rigor in the eyes of mainstream science – he presented the world with the first artificial cell: called Synthia, it was a Mycoplasma mycoides bacterium (one of the simplest existing ones) from which he had removed its natural DNA and inserted a chromosome containing 473 genes constructed in the lab.

To those who accused him of playing God, he replied very seriously: “I’m not playing.” According to his vision, artificial bacteria, powered by human-written DNA, could perform useful tasks for humanity: from producing medicines to destroying pollutants.

In 2013, he gave Italian scientist Rino Rappuoli the genetic sequence of the meningococcal B bacterium, enabling him to create the first vaccine against the disease.

On board his yacht, he had also searched the sea in search of microorganisms capable of performing completely new and unknown functions, which he could imitate and recreate in his laboratory to improve the lives of humanity. In this respect too, he felt superior to official science.

And when, years after reading the human genome, he discovered that the DNA sample used for sequencing was his own, no one was surprised.


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