Breaking the oil addiction

Craig Venter wants to cure us of our oil addiction, and like all addictions this will be a hard one to break. Venter has hope that we can use microbes to create alternative fuels. He wants to create a designer microbe from scratch and add genes culled from the sea in order to turn crops such as switch grass and cornstalks into ethanol.

Venter has previously been successful in mapping the human genome and sequencing human DNA. He is regarded as one of the leading scientists of this century for his research. He is the founder and president of the J. Craig Venter Institute and J. Craig Venter Science Foundation for non-profit research and support organizations dedicated to human genomic research, exploration of social and ethical issues in genomics, and alternative energy solutions through microbial sources.