I surround myself with brilliant people who are wise and whose advice I can lean on at every possible moment. The Genome Project is a wonderful team effort. It’s not my project, this is a project that involves close to 1,000 scientists at institutions all over the world. The United States is taking a larger role than any other country, but many other countries are participating. In the U.S. we have a large number of genome centers. We have experts in almost every area. I have advisors who are willing to give up their time and energy to making sure we get there responsibly. It is a heavy load of responsibility, but I can share that load with people who are every bit as committed to the future of this endeavor as I am.

Totally. I’d say parents, brothers, sisters, and don’t go far beyond that for the moment. If you’ve had a long-term relationship with an agent, that’s a whole different thing, because that agent is there to care.

People refer to the ‘LMB culture’ as the thing, one of the things, that makes it special. It’s an attention to people who are willing to tackle very big problems. I mean problems that are so big that you couldn’t just solve it in a grant. The kind of problem that you could devote your life to. I was very fortunate in having mentors of Fred Sanger and César Milstein who exercised a kind of very benign mentorship but encouraged us to think big.

Every time I call my wife or my friends or my mother or whoever and I say, “I fucked it up this time,” and then at the end of it, I feel okay. I resolved what I can do with this.

Obvious I give out my own books fairly often: The Startup View , The Alliance . Recently I’ve been giving out another book of friend of mine, Joshua Cooper Ramos, The Seventh Sense .

The challenge of a big, over-arching vision is that it's hard to know where to start. And your biggest opportunity will change from year to year. Technology changes. Competition changes. You change. My advice: Just start. Find a single unmet need that nudges the world closer to where you believe it's going. And if you hit a dead end, pivot.

Our culture lionizes entrepreneurs who navigate daring switchbacks in their career. Steve Jobs was admired not just for Apple, but also his detour to found Pixar. Elon Musk is revered for helming Tesla AND SpaceX. But don't be distracted by other people's winding paths. I believe you should celebrate your single-mindedness, and stick to your own overarching idea — for as long as it holds your own fascination. In my experience, that could last your entire career.

This is going to sound a little strange, but my trainer started recommending that I add moringa leaf powder to my tea. That’s actually added a rich antioxidant, anti inflammatory and a little bit more substance such that drinking tea now feels a little bit like a snack and is super healthy.