Ryan Bethencourt Quotes

I think future engineered species could be the source of food, hopefully a source of energy, environmental remediation and perhaps replacing the petrochemical industry.

Genomic science, as the newest frontier in scholarly research, is throwing open the door to a revolutionary way of approaching our health, the health and welfare of animals, and the sustainability of our environment.

When we seed millions of acres of land with these plants, what happens to foraging birds, to insects, to microbes, to the other animals, when they come in contact and digest plants that are producing materials ranging from plastics to vaccines to pharmaceutical products?

I want to know what my food has been eating.

Biological engineering is not necessarily understanding systems but rather, I want to be able to design and build biological systems to perform particular applications.

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.

The health of the planet is at stake, because the cruelty and the waste that accompanies the slaughter of billions of animals each year literally infects us all. We could consume healthy plant-based food produced at almost infinitely less cost. What does that say, really, about us and what we're doing... to animals and to ourselves?

Better biofuels are a really big deal. That means we can precisely engineer the molecules in the fuel chain and optimize them along the way. So, if all goes well, they're going to have designer bugs in warm vats that are eating and digesting sugars to excrete better biofuels. I guess that's better living through bugs.

The value of the beans for oil production, as well as for human food, has become recognized so quickly and so generally during the past year that the crop has acquired a commercial standing far in excess of its previous status.

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.

Vegetarians are cool. All I eat are vegetarians - except for the occasional mountain lion steak.

There doesn't seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs.

Genetically modified foods are good.

The unmerited fear of genetically modified organism crops threatens scientific advancements in biotechnology needed to meet the growing global demand for safe and affordable food.

Surely, if we are going to be better at producing food of the right value, then we have to accept that genetic technology... is going to be part of that.

I think that once I started connecting dots of where my food was coming from and the reality of that, as opposed to maybe what you think it is as a little kid, and the realities of how my food was getting to my plate and what the real effects of that are. When I started connecting those dots, I couldn't disconnect them.

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?

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.

Simple genome engineering of bacteria and yeast is just the beginning of the rise of the true biohackers. This is a community of several thousand people, with skill sets ranging from self-taught software hackers to biology postdocs who are impatient with the structure of traditional institutional lab work.

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

After 12,000 years of feeding humankind, all farming except fruit and veg production is likely to be replaced by ferming: brewing microbes through precision fermentation.

Biology, it's the technology which builds our world, and we can harness it to shift humanity from a scarcity to an abundance economy.

Biohackers want to tinker; do fun science; and, in the process, accelerate the pace of biotech innovation.

Genetic modification is a very powerful tool. But like any powerful tool, when using it, you have to take into account the environmental impact, the food safety aspects and so on. There must be a strong regulatory mechanism.