Craig Venter: Designing Life

How did Venter do as a student at school, and how does he seem to feel about schools then and now?

Then he was described as rebellious and didn’t do well in school because he wasn’t emotionally and intellectually ready for school. He enjoyed anything but being in school and didn’t have any interest in being at school.

After the Vietnam War experience, he started his college education at the age of 22 where he had a much clearer goal which was to get into medical school. Because of this, he saw school as a more serious matter and was hooked on science and discovering.

In what way did the Vietnam War experience change Venter?

He saw it as a way of being able to save more lives due to more experience from the war. Because of this, he later became interested in science and medicine and was very fascinated about how you were able to save lives.

When did genetics take off as a science? Genetics was a branch of science which had only really taken off in 1953.

What does it mean “to sequence a genome” and how long did it take for Venter and his team to sequence the world’s first human genome? How big a deal was Venter’s first scientific breakthrough?