Dr. J Craig Venter, founder of Celera Genomics (Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com) In 2010, Craig Venter and his colleagues took a bacterial genome they had designed on a computer, assembled it from chemical building blocks, transplanted it into an empty cell, and watched the cell start dividing. The result, Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0, was the first organism alive on Earth whose parents were a hard drive and a chemistry set. Venter died Tuesday in San Diego at 79, the J. Craig Venter Institute said ; he had recently been diagnosed with cancer and was hospitalized for unexpected complications of the treatment. Most obituaries will lead with the human genome. In 2000, Venter's company, Celera, ran the public Human Genome Project to a near photo finish on the first draft sequence, a private vs. government race that ended in a joint White House announcement and decades of argument over who got there first.…