How did it feel to see the final complete human genome map recently published?
It’s been a little over five years since we sequenced the human genome. There’s all kinds of ongoing analysis of it, and minor corrections and interpretations that will probably be going on for the next hundred years. It was one of the most exciting points, certainly of my career, when we finished the paper with the first description of the human genome. It was an exciting time for the entire team. I think we had more than 200 co-authors on our paper so it was a team effort, but that was the entire team versus literally tens of thousands in the public effort to get it done. New technology made a big difference. Q: After everything you know now, that genes in many species can also be found in the human genetic code, what conclusions have you reached from these discoveries? What’s next? A: We’ve been characterizing the genomes of the ocean. We just finished a two-and-a-half year global, circumnavigation expedition of sampling every 200 miles. We’re about to publish a paper describing abo
