Colbert and Venter: Satire maven meets synth bio king

Celebrity scientist-entrepreneur Craig Venter appeared this week on The Colbert Report to explain that his company is creating synthetic life to solve the energy crisis and save the world – and to plug his new autobiography, A Life Decoded: My Genome, My Life.

A few excerpts from the Venter-Colbert banter (roughly transcribed):

Colbert: You decoded your own genome, not somebody else’s…was there any marker there that proves that you’re some sort of narcissistic egomaniac?

Venter: I think that goes with the territory.

Colbert: What was the most surprising thing you learned?

Venter: We’re far more different from each other than we thought even a few years ago…We don’t all have the same genes, we have major differences. As an individualist, I find that very encouraging.

Colbert: You’re the largest private genomic lab in the world. You’re making patents of different genetic discoveries.

Venter: The only thing we’re patenting is what we’re doing with synthetic biology.

Colbert: Oh, you’re only patenting creating life, that’s all? Is the government controlling you at all or could you be creating a race of mutants who are going to take over eventually. Can you create heat with your gaze? (Laughter)….Tell people what you do.

Venter: We’re trying make a synthetic chromosome…now we can go from digital information to make DNA and lead to new life forms to come up with new energy sources.

Colbert: Are you going to be so rich that you’re gonna make Bill Gates look like Warren Buffet? If this takes off, if genetic engineering becomes a commercial thing, you’re the king, right? You’ll own everything, if you live long enough – which you will, because you’ll never die, because you’ll engineer your head onto a robo skeleton or something like that.

Hat tip to Gillian Madill, now Genetic Technologies Campaigner at Friends of the Earth, formerly top-notch intern at CGS.