“Will undoubtedly shape our understanding of the global ecosystem for decades to come.” —Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies A celebrated genome scientist sails around the world, collecting tens of millions of marine microbes and revolutionizing our understanding of the microbiome that sustains us. Upon completing his historic work on the Human Genome Project, J. Craig Venter declared that he would sequence the genetic code of all life on earth. Thus began a fifteen-year quest to collect DNA from the world’s oldest and most abundant form of life: microbes....