“I thought we'd just sequence the genome once and that would be sufficient for most things in people's lifetimes. Now we're seeing how changeable and adaptable it is, which is why we're surviving and evolving as a species.”

American biotechnologist and entrepreneur, Venter co-founded Celera Genomics and led the private Human Genome Project. His work revolutionized genomics with the first commercially assembled human genome and pioneering synthetic biology research.