The ultimate autobiography

Craig Venter … recipe book.

Craig Venter … recipe book.
Photo: Simon O'Dwyer

By Roger Highfield in London
May 27, 2006

AN AMERICAN scientist has become the first person to gaze at his entire genetic make-up, the DNA recipe book that he inherited from his parents.

Craig Venter, 59, one of the pioneers of the effort to read all the genes in a human - the human genome - has now gone much further and produced the ultimate autobiography, one written in 6 billion "letters" of DNA. This heralds a new era in medicine, that of personal genomics.

While the first draft human genomes, unveiled in 2000, marked an extraordinary scientific feat, they were composites of DNA from different people: the one produced by Dr Venter's company was based on five individuals, including Dr Venter.

More fundamentally, the draft genomes represented only half of our inheritance. Dr Venter and a rival international consortium had each read 3 billion letters of genetic code, when the cells in our bodies contain two slightly different genomes, one from each parent, making 6 billion letters.

A few months from now, the first entire genetic recipe of a single human will be unveiled, as a result of a new effort costing many millions of dollars.

All 6 billion letters of Dr Venter's DNA code will then be poured into a public computer database called GenBank, providing new impetus to the field of human genetics. While medicine has linked scraps of DNA to disease and other traits, future analyses based on the entire genetic make-up of thousands, even millions of people, will provide profound insights into the complex relationship between nature and nurture.

Dr Venter's DNA will eventually show the genes that act with education and upbringing to shape his health, outlook and even his personality.

Dr Venter, now president of the J Craig Venter Institute, in Rockville, Maryland, was criticised during the genome race because he was so closely identified with efforts to withhold DNA data and commercialise human genes. Rival US Government-backed scientists accused him of putting the future of biology in jeopardy with what they likened to a land grab of our inheritance.

So far, an analysis of Dr Ventur's DNA confirms that he does indeed have blue eyes and suggests that he has a variant of Klotho, a gene linked to long life.

Telegraph, London
