speaker232_large.jpg- Founded not-for-profit, research and support organizations dedicated to human genomic research, to exploration of social and ethical issues in genomics, and to seeking alternative energy solutions through microbial sources
- In a two-year cruise from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Florida aboard his yacht, Sorcerer II, taking 200-liter samples of seawater every 200 miles, Venter discovered some six million genes, more than doubling all the genes known so far to science. Consider this possibility of an alternative to fossil fuels: the creation of a living cell that produces hydrogen from photosynthesis.
Most life on this planet is not visible to the naked eye. Yet but for these organisms we would not be alive. They are the source of our atmosphere and the source of a large part of the biology we depend on.
You can start to track the health of an ecosystem by having tens of thousands, if not millions, of indicators instead of just measuring a few chemicals. And as we do repeat studies in environments over time we'll be able to see what's healthy, what's changing. During this interview we've breathed in probably several million bacterial viruses. When you swim in water you're swimming in a sea of bacteria and microorganisms. We're part of this continuum of life and we now have the ability to measure that. I think that's going to have an impact on everything from monitoring sick buildings to airplane environments.
We'll see what shrimp or fish farming is doing to the ecology just by seeing how different toxins or waste products drive certain microbial populations to become overabundant. We might actually begin to predict weather based on early changes in the populations of microorganisms, because El Niños and La Niñas are largely driven by plankton and microplankton.
- Looking for what are called hydroxigenators that are oxygen-insensitive, Trying to put those in a cell that has a photosynthetic apparatus to see if we can go from sunlight to hydrogen and create a clean energy source straight from sunlight.
