In The Voyage of Sorcerer II, Venter and science writer David Ewing Duncan tell the remarkable story of these expeditions and the breakthrough discoveries that followed: plant-like bacteria that get their energy from the sun, proteins that metabolize large quantities of hydrogen, and microbes whose genes protect them from ultraviolet light. The result was an immense library of millions of unknown genes, thousands of novel protein families, and new lineages of bacteria that revealed the unimaginable complexity of life on Earth. Yet despite this exquisite diversity, Venter was confronted with sobering reminders of how human activity is disrupting the delicate microbial ecosystem that sustains life on Earth. In the face of unprecedented climate change, Venter and Duncan show how we can harness the microbial genome to develop alternative sources of energy, food and medicines that could ultimately stave off our destruction.
A captivating story of exploration and discovery, The Sorcerer's Journey II restores microbes to their rightful place as crucial partners in our evolutionary past and guides to our future.
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J. Craig Venter is founder, president and CEO of the J. Craig Venter Institute, a nonprofit research organization. He is co-founder of the biotechnology companies Celera, Synthetic Genomics, and Human Longevity, Inc. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, he has received numerous public honors and scientific awards, including the United States National Medal of Science.
Dimitar Sasselov is professor of astronomy at Harvard University and founder and director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative, a multidisciplinary center bringing together scientists from the physical and life sciences to study the transition from chemistry to life and its place in the context of the Universe.
For more information and videos about the Harvard Science Book Talks, see https://science.fas.harvard.edu/book-talks.
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