He combined research with Dr. Francis Collins to help map the human genome.
J. Craig Venter and Francis Sellers Collins were the primary force behind the Human Genome Project. Venter, with private funding, and Collins, with public funding, independently mapped and sequenced human DNA. In March 2000, US President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a joint declaration that all genome information should be free to the public. This announcement led to cooperation between Collins and Venter, and they jointly announced that both the public Human Genome Project headed by Collins and Celera Genomics headed by Venter had deciphered essentially all the genes in human DNA.
