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TRANSITION TO LIVING MOLECULES. "However, once informational macromolecules are given the opportunity to inherit profitable variation through self-sustained Darwinian evolution, they just may take on a life of their own." Read very carefully. http://www.cfr.org/united-states/biologys-brave-new-world/p31894 View in LinkedIn

ENGINE OF INNOVATION. "Life on Earth ... has demonstrated extraordinary resiliency and inventiveness in adapting to highly disparate niches. Perhaps the most significant invention of life is a genetic system that has an extensible capacity for inventiveness, something that likely will not be achieved soon for synthetic biological systems." http://www.cfr.org/united-states/biologys-brave-new-world/p31894 View in LinkedIn

DISRUPTIVE EFFICIENCIES. "In the past 25 years, modern society has seen many disruptive innovations, most of which have been based on a single platform: the internet. The key feature of most disruptive innovations is their ability to exploit and eliminate inefficiencies in existing systems. The connectedness enabled by the internet has allowed companies across a range of industries to replace traditional, capital-intensive approaches with new ways of doing business." https://lnkd.in/dPP5UrP View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS these two weekends looking at RNA virus quasispecies. No other creature on this planet has such a high rate of mutation, and viruses are the largest pool of genetic diversity; they actively exchange genes between them and with their hosts. These shimmering and shape-shifting populations have played a key role in evolution, and equally, when the symbiotic spectrum is at the extreme, represent diseases that can be very hard to treat. That said, the vast majority of viruses are benign, and co-exist happily with their host ecosystems. View in LinkedIn

INNOVATION is intimately linked to economic growth. "A large proportion of US economic growth in the 20th century was derived from technological and related innovation." https://lnkd.in/dEAvzMk View in LinkedIn

SHIFTING CLOUD. "Quasispecies theory has encouraged viewing and examining viruses as complex mutant spectra, and not merely as simple genetic entities that can be described with a defined nucleotide sequence, as believed only a few decades ago." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042682215001580 View in LinkedIn

HISTORY IN REPETITION. "Before the industrial revolution most items were made by hand, which meant that they were slower to manufacture, more expensive to produce and limited in number. We are at a similar juncture in synthetic biology, having to test and build each part from scratch, which is a long and slow process." https://lnkd.in/dQXsqu8 View in LinkedIn

BIOMOLECULES IN SILICON. "Integration of molecular components with silicon based electronics. This means that eventually electronic computation may be performed with molecular components integrated in CMOS electronics." https://lnkd.in/dChA4Uc View in LinkedIn

NO LONGER PLASTICS. "Thirty years ago, the future lay in programming computers. Today, it’s programming cells." Allusion to Mrs Robinson's husband's advice to Ben... https://lnkd.in/d4dA-zH View in LinkedIn

"BIOLOGY IS THE NEXT IT INDUSTRY. "DNA is the software that makes the hardware. Life is becoming programmable, one of the most powerful shifts that the world has ever seen." (Andrew Hessel). https://lnkd.in/dfprhfp View in LinkedIn