Craig Venter Quotes

The Human Genome Project has given us a genetic parts list.

The mouse genome is an invaluable tool to interpret the human genome.

The important thing is that we now have the tools to sequence all kinds of animals and plants and microbes - as well as humans. It is not important that we didn't actually finish the human sequence yet.

I'm fascinated with genetic science, and I have been for a very long time. I always look at science and technology because I think that the developments in my lifetime have been so remarkable - and we're only at the tip of the iceberg with projects like decoding the human genome.

During this period, I became interested in how the new techniques of cloning and sequencing DNA could influence the study of genetics and I was an early and active proponent of the Human Genome Sequencing Project.

Today we try to identify a gene and then study its properties.

We have a huge amount of DNA in common with jellyfish.

April 25th is DNA Day. I know, you probably had no idea.

Our understanding of how DNA informs our health and development is advancing at an incredible pace.

At the deepest level, all living things that have ever been looked at have the same DNA code. And many of the same genes.

I would argue that we're not limited by actual DNA. You can re-create the ancient DNA by looking at the genomes of existing animals.

When I discover something about the human genome, I experience a sense of awe at the mystery of life, and say to myself, 'Wow, only God knew before.' It is a profoundly beautiful and moving sensation, which helps me appreciate God and makes science even more rewarding for me.

I fell in love with the elegance and precision of genetic analysis and experimentation to answer profound biological questions.

Our own genomes carry the story of evolution, written in DNA, the language of molecular genetics, and the narrative is unmistakable.

I have this idea of trying to catalog all the genes on the planet.

With a hundred and seventy-eight machines to sequence the precise order of the billions of chemicals within a molecule of DNA, B.G.I. produces at least a quarter of the world's genomic data - more than Harvard University, the National Institutes of Health, or any other scientific institution.

In the 1970s, I did a Ph.D. with Fred Sanger in Cambridge who was in the process of inventing ways to map what's inside DNA. He later won the Nobel Prize.

I set up a laboratory in the Department of Physiology in the Medical School in South Africa and begin to try to find a bacteriophage system which we might use to solve the genetic code.

One of the things about genetics that has become clearer as we've done genomes - as we've worked our way through the evolutionary tree, including humans - is that we're probably much more genetic animals than we want to confess we are.

In 15 years we'll have all the sequence, a list of the genes everyone has in common and those that differ among people. We know only something like a tenth of 1 percent of the sequence at the moment.

Physical studies of DNA had, of course, been under way for some years before analysis of virus particles began.

I didn't study science beyond high school level, but I'd been reading a lot of science books by people like Richard Dawkins, Matt Ridley and Daniel Dennett. I also spent a year working on a fellowship in a research centre - the Allan Wilson Centre - where I got a hands-on look at their work sequencing DNA.

I spent 10 years trying to find one gene.

Biological knowledge is doubling every five years.

I think there are people who's lives have been saved because of the study of the genome.