Decoding death: Craig Venter’s quest to uncover secret to immortality in our DNA – Genetic Literacy Project

Craig Venter, the man in the late 1990s who, frustrated by the slow progress of the government-funded Human Genome Project, launched an effort that sequenced human DNA two years earlier than planned[is] back with his most ambitious project since his historic breakthrough 17 years ago. Hes raised $300 million from investors including Celgene and GE Ventures for a new firm, Human Longevity, thats trying to take the DNA information he helped unlock and figure out how to leverage it to cheat death for years, or even decades.

Craig Venter

With Human Longevity, Venter hopes to solve the problem that ultimately limited the efficacy of Celera and the Human Genome Project. Those two groups produced an average DNA sequence. Thats incredibly important for a science textbook, but for individuals, its the differenceshow one persons genes are different from anothers, leading to different noses, eye colors and, yes, diseasesthat matter.

Human Longevity initially sequenced DNA from 40,000 people who had participated in clinical trials for the pharmaceutical companies Roche and AstraZeneca. Venter says this work has led to the discovery of genetic variations that can be found in young people but not older onesmeaning the young folks had genes incompatible with surviving into old age. Figuring out what these genes do could be the kind of breakthrough that would turn the promise of genome sequencing into a lifesaver.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post:Craig Venter Mapped The Genome. Now Hes Trying To Decode Death

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Decoding death: Craig Venter's quest to uncover secret to immortality in our DNA - Genetic Literacy Project