At the time, Venter was trying to accelerate the process of sequencing whole genomes, first one-celled organisms, but ultimately gearing up to take on the decoding of the human genome.

FORBES: Venter and the Vatican

The last time I checked with biologists, philosophers and even politicians on both sides of the debates about abortion, stem cell research and cloning, they were pretty certain human individuals were defined by two sets of chromosomes (half from the male, half from the female) which were arranged in the one-celled zygote after fertilization.

FORBES: Biologist Asserts Your Life Began...Before Fertilization.

The most obvious difference between a yeast and a nematode is that one is single-celled while the other is multi-cellular.

ECONOMIST: The first complete DNA sequence of an animal is now in the bag

Here is just one example: Single-celled marine plants produce fully half of all the oxygen in our atmosphere.

FORBES: Is the Great Barrier Reef Doomed? One of the World's Leading Coral Scientists Thinks So