J. Craig Venter has died at 79. He mapped the first draft of the human genome. The J. Craig Venter Institute announced his death on Wednesday. He died in San Diego after being hospitalized for side effects from cancer treatment. In the 1990s, Venter used a different sequencing technique to speed up decoding the human genome. In 2000, his company Celera Genomics announced, along with the Human Genome Project, that they had decoded the 3.1 billion DNA sub-units, the chemical “letters″ that make up the recipe of human life. Venter’s work helped scientists understand genetic causes for diseases.