George M. Church Quotes

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

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.

It's possible that we could change a human gene and double our life span. I don't know if that's true, but we can't rule that out.

Realizing the ways in which we humans may have been inadvertently changing our genes for millennia provides a way for us to begin to think about the inevitable genetic revolution in medicine that is going to allow us to advertently change our genes over centuries and even decades.

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.

We've been modifying the biological world at the level of DNA for thousands of years. Somehow there is this new fear of what we already have been doing and that fear has limited our ability to provide real solutions.

Once we understand just how to control genes, we have the potential for spinal cord regeneration, bone regeneration, and so on. It might also give us plumper chickens.

I mean, we're really making a quantum change in our relationship to the plant world with genetic modification.

India has the opportunity to be a leader in genetic engineering, It has institutions that no other country has.

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

People have freaked out when I tell them that my dragons are scientifically based... what else can you call a genetically engineered life form?

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.

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.

If there is anything more frightening than the threat of global nuclear war, it is the certainty that humans not only stand on the verge of producing new life forms but may soon be able to tinker with them as if they were vintage convertibles or bonsai trees.

New molecular methods that add or modify genes can protect plants from diseases and pests and improve crops in ways that are both more environmentally benign and beyond the capability of older methods.

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.

Our increasing ability to alter our biology and open up the processes of life is now fueling a new cultural war.

Right now people are interested in genetic engineering to help the human race. That's a noble cause, and that's where we should be heading. But once we get past that - once we understand what genetic diseases we can deal with - when we start thinking about the future, there's an opportunity to create some new life-forms.

What the public needs to understand is that these new technologies, especially in recombinant DNA technology, allow scientists to bypass biological boundaries altogether.

You can now modify the genes of large animals, and the largest animal we are concerned with is the human.

… biologists are now going to be directing evolution.

Like other new and potentially powerful technologies, gene editing raises legitimate questions and understandable concerns about possible risks and misuse. How, then, should the technology be regulated? Rules developed decades ago for other forms of genetic engineering do not necessarily fit. Noting that gene-edited organisms are not transgenic, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has reasonably concluded that genetically edited plants are like plants with naturally occurring mutations and thus are not subject to special regulations and raise no special safety concerns.

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