First Synthetic Species
Craig Venter, the maverick American biologist and businessman captured worldwide attention by announcing the creation of “the first synthetic species,” nicknamed “Synthia.” Venter has the credentials. In 2000, Venter, along with Francis Collins of the National Institutes of Health, jointly announced the complete mapping of the human genome.
In a 60-Minute CBS interview with Steve Kroft (pictured right), in the aired TV segment entitled “J. Craig Venter: Designing Life,” CBS touted that Venter’s new synthetic species “gets its genetic instructions from a synthetic chromosome made by man, not nature.”
