Scott Gottlieb Quotes

We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before.

We're moving from reading the genetic code to writing it.

My feeling is that we can genetically encode almost any kind of chemistry. We just have to learn how to do that.

In the test tube, I can make any DNA I want, recombining it from monkeys, worms, anywhere. So I can explore new rules of breeding with molecules.

By being able to write a genome and plug it into an organism, the software, if you will, changes the hardware.

If you can write DNA, you're no longer limited to 'what is' but to what you could make.

In chemicals, Synthetic Genomics is one of my real loves.

The goal of reanimation research is not to make perfect living copies of extinct organisms, nor is it meant to be a one-off stunt in a laboratory or zoo. Reanimation is about leveraging the best of ancient and synthetic DNA.

I wanted to rewrite the code of life, to make new molecular machines that would solve human problems.

As we all saw in grade school, once you learn how to read a book, somebody is going to want to write one - that's how authors are made. Once we know how to read our own genetic code, someone is going to want to rewrite that 'text,' tinker with traits - play God, some would say.

The first generation of biotech physically cut and pasted from one organism to another. You learned that taxol helped cure cancer, then you found the source organism and extracted the genes to make your drug. Now physical science is becoming information science.

The genomics revolution, proteomics, metabolomics, all of these 'omics' that sound so terrific on grants and on business plans. What we're doing is we are seizing control of our evolutionary future. I mean we're essentially using technology to just jam evolution into fast-forward.

During this period, I became interested in how the new techniques of cloning and sequencing DNA could influence the study of genetics and I was an early and active proponent of the Human Genome Sequencing Project.

How we understand our own selves and how we work with our DNA software has implications that will affect everything from vaccine development to new approaches to antibiotics, new sources of food, new sources of chemicals, even potentially new sources of energy.

Now that we can read and write the genetic code, put it in digital form and translate it back into synthesized life, it will be possible to speed up biological evolution to the pace of social evolution.

What's different here is that we have now technologies that allow these life science companies to bypass classical breeding. That's what makes it both powerful and exciting.

Genome design is going to be a key part of the future. That's why we need fast, cheap, accurate DNA synthesis, so you can make a lot of iterations of something and test them.

Sometime in the future, I am a hundred percent certain scientists will sit down at a computer terminal, design what they want the organism to do, and build it.

My mother often mailed me articles from 'Reader's Digest' about advances in DNA chemistry. No matter how I tried to explain it to her, she never grasped the concept that I could have been writing those articles, that something I had invented made most of those DNA discoveries possible.

There's massive government initiatives going around the world, and you see that there's a real enthusiasm for genetics.

Printing novel DNA might open the way to achievements once only conceivable in science fiction: designer bacteria that can produce new chemicals, such as more efficient fuels, or synthetic versions of our cells that make us resistant to the effects of radiation.

If you get very fine, accurate, and inexpensive control over your genome, you can fundamentally change the kind of organism you are. You are extending human capacity.

The potential for synthetic biology and biotechnology is vast; we all have an opportunity to create the future together.

Mother Nature has been the best bioengineer in history. Why not harness the evolutionary process to design proteins?

Engineering the biological world was even more interesting than engineering the mechanical world.