In defense of Craig Venter

Browsing through BetterHumans, I came across a blog entry (Who's who in biotech), which commented on a feature with the same name published in Nature Biotechnology.

After reading the blog entry and the original feature, I couldn't help but to write this comment at that blog:

Someone who changed everything was Craig Venter. He was enormously influencial before Celera, during his time at Celera, and after it. His push with ESTs and genome sequencing moved the whole community. If it wasn't for Venter and the rush that Celera made for the human genome, we would be still waiting for the public assembly. Almost ANY biotech has profited from the treasure chest that the human genome sequence is. The hype has dissipated, the crazy promises didn't materialize, but biologists have a sound tool that enhances enormously their daily work.

I have a lot of hope in his plans to make a minimal synthetic organism. I bet it will become an extraordinary asset for biotechnology.