Kary Mullis Quotes

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.

With a hundred and seventy-eight machines to sequence the precise order of the billions of chemicals within a molecule of DNA, B.G.I. produces at least a quarter of the world's genomic data - more than Harvard University, the National Institutes of Health, or any other scientific institution.

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

I was using very unconventional methods to sequence the telemetric DNA, originally.

Here at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, we have genetically rearranged various viruses and bacteria as part of our medical research. In fact, we have been able to create entirely new types of DNA molecules by splicing together the genetic information from different organisms - recombinant DNA.

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.

That work led to the emergence of the recombinant DNA technology thereby providing a major tool for analyzing mammalian gene structure and function and formed the basis for me receiving the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

In the late 1970s, when I was a professor at Caltech, I pioneered four instruments for analyzing genes and proteins that revolutionized modern biology - and one of these, the automated DNA sequencer, enabled the Human Genome Project.

In the 1970s, I did a Ph.D. with Fred Sanger in Cambridge who was in the process of inventing ways to map what's inside DNA. He later won the Nobel Prize.

Joseph Mandell and I began by attempting to make chromatography of DNA work.

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.

The important thing is that we now have the tools to sequence all kinds of animals and plants and microbes - as well as humans. It is not important that we didn't actually finish the human sequence yet.

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

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.

I think I've achieved some good things; doing the first genome in history - my team on that was phenomenal and all the things they pulled together; writing the first genome with a synthetic cell; my teams at the Venter Institute, Human Longevity, and before that Celera.

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

My DNA is building a product and a service.

It once seemed that the most profound feats stemming from DNA-based science would spring from our ability to read and detect genes, which we call the science of genomics. But the real opportunities lie in our ability to write DNA, to synthesize new gene sequences and insert them into organisms, resulting in brand-new biological functions.

When I was 16, my dad took me to a DNA conference at the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco, California, and I was captivated by this way of looking at biology and by the discussions of bits of nucleic acid that could make us sick.

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.

Human beings have been manipulating the biological world for thousands of years without understanding how DNA codes function.

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

I can see no practical application of molecular biology to human affairs... DNA is a tangled mass of linear molecules in which the informational content is quite inaccessible.

And of course, identifying all human genes and proteins will have great medical significance.

I'm fascinated with genetic science, and I have been for a very long time. I always look at science and technology because I think that the developments in my lifetime have been so remarkable - and we're only at the tip of the iceberg with projects like decoding the human genome.