George M. Church
I will make the argument that we are poorly adapted to our current environment. I mean, we did not evolve to sit all day and be exposed to giant amounts of really tasty food.
We will have to make a decision, as we go into new environments outside of earth, whether we want to drag along with us all our pathogens. We can, or we can't - it's up to us - but I consider that part of genome engineering is how we interact with the huge part of our genome which is our microbiome.
What I really wanted was for everybody to have their genome and, ideally, everybody to share their genome, and for that, we needed to bring the price way down.
Reversal of ageing is high on my list of things to do, and not just because I'm getting old.
If we can come up with a way of backing up my brain into another that I have in my back-pack, we'll do it. People talk themselves out of things very easily. Things that they think are a million years away, or never, are actually four years away.
A few dozen changes to the genome of a modern elephant - to give it subcutaneous fat, woolly hair and sebaceous glands - might suffice to create a variation that is functionally similar to the mammoth. Returning this keystone species to the tundras could stave off some effects of warming.
Aside from bringing back extinct species, reanimation could help living ones by restoring lost genetic diversity. The Tasmanian devil (aka Sarcophilus harrisii) is so inbred at this point that most species members can exchange tumor cells without rejection.
I don't actually believe there's any such thing as privacy.
Why would you not have a robot that looks like Abraham Lincoln? Why would it look like an erector set? Why use a computer with a punchcard, when you could use one with a touch pen on the screen? Why a car, when you could use a jetpack?
Letting the tundra melt is the equivalent to burning all of the forests in all of the world and their roots two and a half times over.
Our ancestors didn't need any genetic enhancements to be able to sit for twelve hours a day and eat fatty, sugary foods, but we need enhancements that handle that altered environment.
If we go into space, we need enhancements that handle radiation and osteoporosis... or else we're dead. So what seems like an enhancement in one generation becomes life and death in another generation.
I would argue that we're not limited by actual DNA. You can re-create the ancient DNA by looking at the genomes of existing animals.
What dinosaur traits are missing from an ostrich? The ostrich has a toothless beak, but there are mutations that cause teeth and claws to come back to their mouth and limbs. You need to replace the feathers with scales, but there are no feathers on their legs and feet, so you just need to make its whole body like its legs are.
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.
Reversal is something that has been demonstrated in a number of different animals in a number of different ways. I think that's going to translate into larger animals and humans. We won't know until we try. But we are trying 65 different genes in different combinations to see if we can reproduce the aging reversal that we've seen in small animals.
If we could take one of my skin cells and turn it into an embryo-like cell and turn it back into a skin cell, it has reset almost all of the developmental indications of age.
I don't think it is about stalling or curing: it's about reversing. Curing gives you the impression of immortality. Stalling gives you the impression that you'll be 85 forever, which is not great.
Anytime you see somebody keeping a secret, that's symptomatic that something's wrong with the society around them. That means there's discrimination or worse.
There are a few genetic traits that make people feel sorry for you, and there are some, like narcolepsy, at which people take personal offense unless you tell them in advance.
As part of our dedication to safety engineering in biology, we're trying to get better at creating physically contained test systems to develop something that eventually will be so biologically contained that we won't need physical containment anymore.
You should have personalized genomics, personalized physiology, personalized medicine, where each person's different, and each body is an integrated whole.
Most groups patent ways of using genetic discoveries as part of non-obvious diagnostic and therapeutic protocols and slightly or greatly altered genes.
The main goal is to increase diversity. The one thing that is bad for society is low diversity. This is true for culture or evolution, for species and also for whole societies. If you become a monoculture, you are at great risk of perishing.Collection: Diversity
I have faith that science is a good thing. Seriously, I'd say that I am very much in awe of nature. In fact, I think to some extent, "awe" was a word that was almost invented for scientists.Collection: Thinking
This is a whole new era where we're moving beyond little edits on single genes to being able to write whatever we want throughout the genome. The goal is to be able to change it as radically as our understanding permits.Collection: Moving
A poet sees a flower and can go on and on about how beautiful the colors are. But what the poet doesn't see is the xylem and the phloem and the pollen and the thousands of generations of breeding and the billions of years before that. All of that is only available to the scientists.Collection: Beautiful
Faith is a very powerful force in the history of humanity. So I greatly respect different kinds of faith. Just as I think diversity is a really good thing genetically, it's also a good thing societally.Collection: Powerful
The recreation of Neanderthals would be mainly a question of societal risk avoidance.Collection: Risk
Neanderthals might think differently than we do. We know that they had a larger cranial size. They could even be more intelligent than us. When the time comes to deal with an epidemic or getting off the planet or whatever, it's conceivable that their way of thinking could be beneficial.Collection: Intelligent