Book Review

A Life Decoded: My Genome, My Life

N Engl J Med 2007; 357:2313-2314November 29, 2007

Article

A Life Decoded: My Genome, My Life
By J. Craig Venter. 390 pp., illustrated. New York, Viking, 2007. $25.95. ISBN: 978-0-670-06358-1

Whether launching a hostile takeover of the Human Genome Project or discovering millions of new genes from the oceans, whether genetically engineering artificial life or appearing on television's Comedy Central channel, J. Craig Venter is unquestionably one of the most celebrated and controversial biologists of his generation. His latest exploit was the publication in September of his personal “book of life” — his complete genome sequence.

Venter thus finds himself in the exalted position of being the first person to try to decode his genome, or as he writes in his autobiography, A Life Decoded, “the sum of six billion base pairs of my DNA [struggling] to understand itself.” But readers looking for insight on how personal genomics and the rapidly approaching era of the “$1,000 genome” will revolutionize medicine will be disappointed. Venter offers some 25 breezy vignettes about his own genome sequence, but he doesn't dwell on the implications. He reveals that he carries gene variants that increase his risk of heart disease and skin cancer and allegedly boost his physical endurance. He also suggests that his healthy teenage sex drive was due to his male-determining SRY gene, but we hardly needed a genome sequence to tell us that.

The first half of A Life Decoded is a compelling read. Venter recalls his early years in California, leading up to his tour in Vietnam. A rebellious child, Venter admits he was a poor student who “peaked in kindergarten.” He enlisted in the Navy and harbored dreams of swimming in the Olympics. But in 1967, Venter was dispatched as a hospital corpsman to Da Nang, Vietnam, and describes his experience there as “MASH without the jokes and pretty women.” He encountered thousands of young men who had been maimed or killed, and many soldiers died in his intensive care ward. “I did not feel survivor's guilt,” Venter writes, “but I did want to do something with my life to honor all those who were now beyond my help.”

Venter returned to California in 1968 with three passions: sailing; Barbara, his first wife (the book is dedicated to their son, Christopher); and medicine. Two decades later, he was a respected biochemist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). His career took a profound shift when he began testing Applied Biosystems's first automated DNA sequencer. In 1991, his group published a classic paper in Science that described a shortcut method for the identification of genes, born out of his frustration at spending years searching for a solitary sequence. But that breakthrough also fueled bitterness and envy; there were accusations that he was undermining the Human Genome Project and allowing the NIH to apply for gene patents. When he accepted a windfall of funding from venture capitalists to establish his own nonprofit research institute, he was accused of cashing out. Posing for the cover of Business Week with biotech executive Bill Haseltine under the banner “Gene Kings” a few years later didn't win him any friends either.

The second half of A Life Decoded covers more familiar territory, as Venter duly recounts the turbulent years during which he ran Celera Genomics, trying to turn it into the “Bloomberg of biology.” He has some harsh words for certain scientists in the public genome consortium, including one “Eric Slander” (a thinly veiled reference to Eric S. Lander of the Broad Institute). However, Venter's erstwhile rivals are shown in a more flattering light than is his former boss, Tony White, the CEO of Applera, who is portrayed as “a short, rotund man” obsessed with Venter's intense media profile.

For a man adept at making headlines, Venter goes out of his way to share credit with his loyal lieutenants. True, he does speak of his “fans” greeting him after his keynote address at a black-tie affair at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in 2001 (but having been there, I do not think it is a wild exaggeration). He counts himself among a handful of researchers such as Louis Pasteur who have enjoyed “the freedom, opportunity, and privilege to start their own independent research institute.”

Venter concludes his book by recapping his fascinating work in environmental genomics and synthetic biology. During my first meeting with Venter in 1991, I asked him what his ultimate goal was. Without hesitation, he said he would love to retrace the voyage that Charles Darwin made on the HMS Beagle. To his great credit, that dream and many more have come true. So I was disappointed that the book didn't include more nautical adventures from his round-the-world expedition on the Sorcerer II, such as the episode when his boat was impounded in French Polynesia because of a territorial dispute over microbial gene prospecting.

But I suspect that Venter is much more excited about looking toward the future than about recalling the past. After all, he is building a new company (Synthetic Genomics) as well as a new carbon-neutral facility at the Venter Institute on the West Coast, and he is engaged to his publicist. I have no doubt that Venter has a lot more sailing — and sequencing — in him yet.

Kevin Davies, Ph.D.
, Needham, MA 02494
kevin_davies@bio-itworld.com