He directs the MedSeq Project, the first National Institutes of Health study to examine the impact of whole genome sequencing in the practice of medicine.

WSJ: Should Healthy People Have Their Genomes Sequenced?

The cost and time taken to sequencing the whole genome of a bacterium has plummeted.

BBC: C. diff spread 'fast and easy'

George Church, a molecular geneticist at Harvard Medical School and a pioneer of whole-genome sequencing, is unpersuaded.

ECONOMIST: Patenting genes is bad for diagnosis

But this sort of whole-genome sequencing, which has so far been completed on five bacteria, should allow a much better understanding of how bacteria work, what they have in common, and what makes individual species unique.

ECONOMIST: Stomach turning | The

He says that when whole-genome sequencing arrives, single-gene patents will be of no use.

ECONOMIST: Patenting genes is bad for diagnosis

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