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" The Janus-like nature of innovation - its responsible use and so on - was evident at the very birth of human ingenuity, when humankind first discovered how to make fire on demand. "

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" We find all kinds of species that have taken up a second chromosome or a third one from somewhere, adding thousands of new traits in a second to that species. So, people who think of evolution as just one gene changing at a time have missed much of biology. "

Craig Venter

People

Think

Time

" Early on, when you're working in a new area of science, you have to think about all the pitfalls and things that could lead you to believe that you had done something when you hadn't, and, even worse, leading others to believe it. "

" Preventative medicine has to be the direction we go in. For example, if colon cancer is detected early - because a person knew he had a genetic risk and was having frequent exams - the surgery is relatively inexpensive and average survival is far greater than 10 years. "

" There is a long history of how DNA sequencing can bring certainty to people's lives. "

" The problem with existing biology is you change only one or two genes at a time. "

" I willed myself through a junior college to a university and, ultimately, a Ph.D. "

" I suppose if there's a set of genes I have, it's detesting authority. "

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

" My greatest fear is not the abuse of technology but that we will not use it at all. "

" People think genes are an absolute cause of traits. But the notion that the genome is the blueprint for humanity is a very bad metaphor. If you think we're hard-wired and deterministic, there should indeed be a lot more genes. "

" I am absolutely certain that life can exist in outer space, move around, find a new aqueous environment. "

" Most people don't realize it, because they're invisible, but microbes make up about a half of the Earth's biomass, whereas all animals only make up about one one-thousandth of all the biomass. "

" People think that Celera's trying to patent the whole human genome because it's been used as - I guess people in Washington learn how to do political attacks, and so it gets used as a political weapon, not as a factual one. "

" Fred Sanger was one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. "

" There are still so many questions to answer about the workings of the human body and, most mysterious of all, it is influenced by our state of mind. "

" Sailing is a big outlet for me. It's one of the key things I've been able to do by commingling science with sailing and my love of the sea. Also, I have several motorcycles, and I like to go on motorcycle trips. "

Craig Venter

Key

Sea

" Science should be the most fun job on the planet. You get to ask questions about the world around you and go out and seek the answers. Not to have fun doing that is crazy. "

" I've always been fascinated with adrenaline; it's saved my life more than once, and it's caused me to need it to save my life more than once. One of the most fascinating responses in human evolution, adrenaline sharpens your brain; it sharpens your responses. "

Craig Venter

Life

My Life

" Agriculture as we know it needs to disappear. We can design better and healthier proteins than we get from nature. "

" In a biological system, the software builds its own hardware, but design is critical, and if you start with digital information, it has to be really accurate. "

" Life is a DNA software system. "

" Since my own genome was sequenced, my software has been broadcast into space in the form of electromagnetic waves, carrying my genetic information far beyond Earth. Whether there is any creature out there capable of making sense of the instructions in my genome, well, that's another question. "

" It turns out synthesizing DNA is very difficult. There are tens of thousands of machines around the world that make small pieces of DNA - 30 to 50 letters in length - and it's a degenerate process, so the longer you make the piece, the more errors there are. "

" Even with seemingly simple things like eye color, you can't tell from my genetic code whether I have blue eyes or not. So it's naive to think that complex human behaviors, like risk-seeking, are driven by changes in one or two genes. "

" The environment has fallen to the wayside in politics. "

" Everybody is looking for a naturally occurring algae that is going to be a miracle cell to save the world, and after a century of looking, people still haven't found it. "

" I've gotten some pretty nice awards. I'm having trouble finding places to put them all. "

" I wrote an editorial piece in 'Science' about the nightly data release and how I thought it was bad for science as a field, I think a few years before Celera was formed. "

" Darwin didn't walk around the Galapagos and come up with the theory of evolution. He was exploring, collecting, making observations. It wasn't until he got back and went through the samples that he noticed the differences among them and put them in context. "

" It appears that the human genome does indeed contain deserts, or large, gene-poor regions. "