Genome Pioneer, X Prize Founder Tackle Aging

Craig Venter, who managed to make science both lucrative and glamorous with his pioneering approach to gene sequencing and synthetic biology, is taking on a new venture: aging.

He has joined forces with the founder of the X Prize and an expert in cell therapy to launch on Tuesday a new company called Human Longevity Inc. The man who once took off on his personal yacht to sample all the microscopic life in the seas plans to leverage some of the most fashionable new scientific approaches to figure out what makes us sick and old.

The San Diego-based company will tackle aging using gene sequencing; stem cell approaches; the collection of bacteria and other life forms that live in and on us called the microbiome; and the metabolome, which includes the byproducts of life called metabolites.

Theyll start out with what they are calling the largest human sequencing operation in the world.

We are building a lab to a scale never attempted (before), Venter told NBC News.

Venter first shot to fame when he raced with government scientists to finish the first map of all human DNA, called the human genome. Venter, himself a former government scientist, annoyed his former colleagues with a brash new approach to gene sequencing that was much faster but far less accurate, in their opinion.

We are building a lab to a scale never attempted (before).

The two teams joined forces, the partnership worked, and they finished their first draft in 2001.

Venter later parted ways with the company he founded to sequence genes and went on to tackle other challenges, including a venture that included weeks on his personal yacht sequencing the DNA of microbial life in the ocean.

He also took a crack at creating artificial life, making a synthetic bacterium of sorts, and making more controversy with that.

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Genome Pioneer, X Prize Founder Tackle Aging