On the eve of his 69th birthday, Craig Venter looks on, amused, as his digital doppelganger shuffles from foot to foot. Venter’s white-bearded avatar is the star of an iPad app being demonstrated to me by his head of informatics, Scott Skellenger. Dressed in jeans and a grey V-neck T-shirt, Venter’s little digital archetype can be made to walk, even dance.
His wife (and publicist) Heather sits within earshot in his huge office in San Diego. Venter drolly remarks that he originally wanted to be able to remove his avatar’s heart “Aztec-style” or pluck out its brain for inspection and introspection. Instead, arranged on the app around the fidgeting mini-Venter is a solar system of options – brain segmentation, connectivity and anatomy, and intracranial arteries. I study a scan of Venter’s hips and spine and peer inside his head. Colours reveal the different segments of his brain. I can clearly see his white and grey matter. “I have the brain of a 44-year-old,” he says. Another touch and I can inspect Venter’s genome – which maps his ancestry to the UK – his gait, even his individual footsteps captured for posterity by a smart floor. Biotech’s biggest entrepreneur has been decomposed into binary.
His latest venture, Human Longevity, Inc., or HLI, creates a realistic avatar of each of its customers – they call the first batch ‘voyagers’ – to provide an intimate, friendly interface for them to navigate the terabytes of medical information being gleaned about their genes, bodies and abilities. Venter wants HLI to create the world’s most important database for interpreting the genetic code, so he can make healthcare more proactive, preventative and predictive. Such data marks the start of a decisive shift in medicine, from treatment to prevention. Venter believes we have entered the digital age of biology. And he is the first to embark on this ultimate journey of self-discovery.
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Image: © Jen Jansen
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