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.
The potential for synthetic biology and biotechnology is vast; we all have an opportunity to create the future together.
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.
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?
By fermenting tiny single-cell organisms we will be able to synthesise all manner of foodstuffs in the future, everything from pasta to eggs, fish and meat. Small tweaks in the process will enable production of different proteins used to replicate food we already eat.
Can we develop so sound and extensive a genetics that we can hope to breed, in the future, superior men?
What we're talking about is creating new forms of life on the basis of new values.
Already from your own cells scientists can grow skin, cartilage, noses, blood vessels, bladders and windpipes. In the future, scientists will grow more complex organs, like livers and kidneys. The phrase 'organ failure' will disappear.
It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.
Jellyfish serve as a model for bioengineers for the same reason yeast were once so valuable to geneticists: they're simple to deconstruct.
The notion of superhumans is using bioengineering and artificial intelligence to upgrade human abilities. If they use the power to change themselves, to change their own minds, their own desires, then we have no idea what they will want to do.
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.
Some bioengineering is good, especially if it results in plants that are more drought-resistant or perennial food crops.
There's so many ways of making product design easier, more efficient, quicker. People are now taking DNA from cows and growing leather. The implications of that, in what it has from a grain standpoint, are enormous.
Men will not be content to manufacture life: they will want to improve on it.
Mother Nature has been the best bioengineer in history. Why not harness the evolutionary process to design proteins?
I see, in the future, bioengineered almost everything you can imagine that we use.
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.
Engineering the biological world was even more interesting than engineering the mechanical world.
Genetically modified foods are good.
Biological engineering is not necessarily understanding systems but rather, I want to be able to design and build biological systems to perform particular applications.
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.
Man can be scientifically manipulated.
We'll continue to heal human bodies through biotechnology but we'll also increasingly feed, clothe and house the world through bioengineered systems. Ultimately, there's no reason why live animals should be used in any part of our food or goods chain and we're working to make that a reality.
We believe GMOs are safe.
