Craig Venter: Joining 3.5 Billion Years of Microbial Invention

With his current series of breakthroughs in synthetic biology Craig Venter and his team are not so much creating life as joining life. Reverse-engineering evolution's long-refined tricks and subtleties at the molecular level is building humanity's most powerful toolkit yet. Through shotgun-sequencing whole microbial populations ("metagenomics"), the domain of the organisms that rule the world is at last opening up. Genome synthesis will lead to major advances in biomedicine and in adjusting civilization's global energy metabolism.

Speakers: Craig Venter
Director: Chris Baldwin, Shoulder High Productions
Producer: Stewart Brand and The Long Now Foundation
Studio: Whole Earth Films
DVD FORMAT: NTSC, Widescreen
Region: All Regions
Language: English
Number of discs: 1
Rating: Unrated
Release date: February 25, 2008
Duration: 109 minutes