Craig Venter is making waves. He is standing at the helm of his 200-horsepower outboard, gaze fixed over the bow, a baseball cap thrust down tight against the wind. The outboard bounds along the shore toward Hyannis Harbor, beating the water behind into an angry blond froth. As he approaches another boat, he exerts a little more pressure on the throttle, leaving the larger vessel dazed and wobbling in his wake like a top at the end of its spin. August on Cape Cod, and Venter is in his element.
Some people think there’s a gene for an affinity to water, he says, when he slows down enough for his subdued voice to be heard over the engine. Maybe I’ve got it.
If there are genetic affinities for moving quickly and causing a lot of commotion in the process, Venter probably has those too. In less than a decade he has sprinted from respectful obscurity at the National Institutes of Health to become—based on sheer output—perhaps the most productive biologist in the world. He began his dash with an audacious end run around the largest directed enterprise in science; went on to establish his own institute and make a modest fortune; kindled the ire, resentment, and grudging respect of the scientific elite; and in the end, set the pace for how life will be studied in the twenty-first century.
The focus of that study is the genome—the complete genetic code for an organism, whether man or microbe. And traditionally it has been regarded as a mysterious black box, the contents of which have to be tweezed out gene by individual gene. But at the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Maryland (where Venter, its head, spends most of his time on dry land), genomes are being thumbed open like overripe figs and turned inside out, their innermost contents laid open for all to work their will upon. Venter’s brand of biology isn’t pretty or romantic, and some of his colleagues would characterize Venter himself as more an opportunist than a visionary. But no one doubts his contribution. According to the Institute for Scientific Information, which tracks the number of times research papers are referred to in other papers, Craig Venter was the second most often cited biologist in the world last year. The most cited biologist, in case you’re wondering, works for him.
For the first time, we can look at organisms from the inside out, he says. It’s a fantastic time to be a biologist.
