Dr. Craig Venter, the biotech entrepreneur who helped sequence the human genome and developed the shotgun sequencing technique, received the Dickson Prize in medicine today at the University of Pittsburgh, Alumni Hall. During his presentation, he briefly talked about his career, offered a historical perspective of how the DNA (3 billion base pairs) was read in its entirety ten years ago using the shotgun sequencing approach and demonstrated how his company can literally create artificial genomes from scratch using supercomputers and robotic platforms. Overall, his presentation was easy to follow for the lay person but offered very valuable insight of how his new technology will help to solve many world problems. After attending today’s presentation, I am convinced that Dr. Craig Venter has risen to the level of Steve Jobs (may he rest in peace) in the biotech industry for the following reasons outlined below: Dr. Venter has been able to merge the fields of biology, microbiology, biochemistry and computer science to create life from scratch by using supercomputers, DNA sequencers (HiSeq2000 and ABS300XL) in order to read DNA and write DNA. Moreover, his team developed the software and hardware to be able to synthesize new microbes from scratch or making hybrids of microorganisms that have a different set of genes. It is interesting to note that Dr. Venter relates many phenomena that occurs in biology to the field of computer science. DNA is the software that can be read by computers to convert that information to analog data (strings of 1’s and 0’s), and write DNA again using supercomputers/ DNA synthesizers while other microorganisms “boot up” the new "installed" DNA in order to produce new proteins or create a new species of bacteria. Technology is evolving too fast and is helping to significantly reduce the cost to read/write DNA. To put it in perspective, the human genome can be sequenced in less than two weeks for $4,000 using supercomputers the size of less than 3 feet by 3 feet and containing powerful 1.5 terabyte chips. He predicts that the cost will significantly go down and may be able to sequence human genomes in less than two days within five years. Overall, he has very ambitious but medically relevant and revolutionary goals he wants to accomplish. These are some of the highlights of his past accomplishments and future goals of Dr. Venter's company, Synthetic Genomics Inc.. 1. Dr. Craig Venter and his team were the first to sequence a diploid human genome 3 years ago. 2. He has taken on an ambitious project to study human DNA diversity: by sequencing hundreds of genomes from individuals from Africa and Europe, his team of investigators have found that there is 1-3% DNA variation among individuals outside of Africa and most of that variation is found in non-coding pieces of DNA. Oddly enough, there is a much higher DNA variation among different human beings from different groups in Africa than outside of Africa. Not sure what that means. 3. By sampling air from the 22nd floor of a building in New York, he found that 50% of DNA found in the air of New York was DNA derived from rats (probably from subway rats that shed hair/skin), 20-25% of DNA is derived from humans and the rest from other sources. He was boasting on the fact that the air in San Diego is cleaner as the DNA was derived from fungi, bacteria and human sources (epithelial cells shed by humans on a daily basis). He also sample DNA from different homes and hospitals from San Diego and found that hospitals harbored many infectious microorganisms compared to a residence. No surprise there either. He has sequenced entire genomes from microorganisms derived from ocean, the Red Sea, Black Sea and other parts of the world. In a nutshell, he discovered thousands of new genes with no known function and may take years to figure out what they do. Also, he claimed that he will propose a new classification scheme for classifying microorganisms by next year based on this data. On other projects, he has helped to sequence DNA genomes from gut bacteria (microbiota genomics project) derived from different individuals and has found that the human body contains about 16 million bacterial genes. 4. On more pragmatic biotech approaches, he is the first to synthesize a complete genome of a virus (lambdaX174) from scratch using supercomputers and robotic platforms and has learned a way to "boot up" by activating the virus and giving it the ability to infect and destroy bacteria. He has synthesized the most simple living microorganism (Mycoplasma) from scratch, and "transplanted" the DNA of one species of Mycoplasma to completely change another species after the genetic code has been "booted up". Interestingly, he has synthesized mitochondrial rat DNA from scratch and has refined a technique to allow yeast to store complete genomes of bacteria and transfer the new artificial DNA to other recipient bacteria. To quell some ethical concerns, he claims that all his artificial microbes have a watershed mark in which the name of this company and authors are imprinted in the genetic code of each organism's DNA in order to trace organisms that may get lost outside a lab. Obviously, only he has the original template to crack the code. Finally, he explained the ethical implications and the need for regulating this technology if it gets FDA approval for accelerating the production of new vaccines by synthesizing pieces of DNA and produce vaccines targets to produce vaccines. 5. On the more ambitious side: he plans to help solve world hunger and mass produce biofuels by synthesizing microorganisms from scratch that can produce sugars (starch), amino acids, vitamins and organisms that can use CO2 emissions from the air and produce methane, hydrocarbons or biofuels.
