Abstract

A Life Decoded is an exhilarating document, to begin with, reading like a novel or even a science epic. In the author’s own words, it is “a tale of seemingly impossible quests and grand objectives”, of “great rivalries and bitter disputes”, of “battles of ideologies, morals and ethics” and of “clashes of egos” (p. 2), an adventure that swept the author “from peaks of incredible exhilaration as I marshaled a relatively small but dedicated army of scientists, computers and robots to achieve what seemed almost impossible, and then plunged me into black pits of depression as I faced opposition from Nobel laureates and senior government officials, my colleagues, and even my wife” (p. 2). Moreover, besides being an autobiography proper, the book also contains a series of reflections on the genes present in the author’s own genome, one of the first individual genomes that was sequenced and made publicly available on the web – the “recipe” that made Craig Venter, as he himself describes it. In separate boxes dedicated to his sequenced genome, he especially focuses on genes that are associated with behavioural characteristics such as thrill-seeking behaviour, ADHD and the ability to cope with almost superhuman amounts of stress. Thus, in Venter’s case, autobiography and the genome are connected in more than one way with one another.