Craig Venter, a microbiologist
- 1Fondazione Biotecnopolo di Siena, Siena, Italy
Abstract
The scientific career of Craig Venter, who pioneered genomics, big data, and synthetic biology, has been a turning point in biology. His science will continue to influence the world forever. He will be remembered for the first genome of a living organism, for the human genome, and for the first fully synthetic bacterial chromosome. I was fortunate to walk part of an amazing journey with Craig and experience first-hand what visionary science is and what it can lead to for the benefit of humankind. In this article, I make the case that Craig should be remembered also for his revolutionary contribution to microbiology and vaccinology. Indeed, he was the first to sequence a bacterial genome and the first to get a glimpse of the almost infinite diversity of the microbial world, and he pioneered the transition from conventional to modern vaccinology by introducing genomics and synthetic biology.
BibTeX
@article{rappuoli2026craig,
title = {{Craig Venter, a microbiologist}},
author = {Rino Rappuoli},
journal = {mBio},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.1128/mbio.01732-26},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1128/mbio.01732-26},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Craig Venter, a microbiologist
AU - Rino Rappuoli
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/18
JO - mBio
DO - 10.1128/mbio.01732-26
UR - https://doi.org/10.1128/mbio.01732-26
AB - The scientific career of Craig Venter, who pioneered genomics, big data, and synthetic biology, has been a turning point in biology. His science will continue to influence the world forever. He will be remembered for the first genome of a living organism, for the human genome, and for the first fully synthetic bacterial chromosome. I was fortunate to walk part of an amazing journey with Craig and experience first-hand what visionary science is and what it can lead to for the benefit of humankind. In this article, I make the case that Craig should be remembered also for his revolutionary contribution to microbiology and vaccinology. Indeed, he was the first to sequence a bacterial genome and the first to get a glimpse of the almost infinite diversity of the microbial world, and he pioneered the transition from conventional to modern vaccinology by introducing genomics and synthetic biology.
SN - 2150-7511
ER -