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THE HAIL MARY GENOME for J Craig Venter is the minimal number of genes of a synthetic bug to be functional. " " http://lnkd.in/m_9BCq View in LinkedIn

ASIMOV (1964) PREDICTED: “Ordinary agriculture will keep up with great difficulty and there will be ‘farms’ turning to the more efficient micro-organisms. Processed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavors.”" " http://lnkd.in/aXM2pm. View in LinkedIn

SYNTHETIC CIRCUITS in living cells with multiple applications. View in LinkedIn

JC VENTER the radical. “Agriculture as we know it needs to disappear,” Venter said. “We can design better and healthier proteins than we get from nature.” By this, he didn’t mean growing apples in a Petri dish. He meant producing bulk commodities like corn, soy and wheat, that we use in processed products like tofu and cereal. “If you can produce the key ingredients with 10 or 100 times the efficiency,” he said, “that’s a better use of land and resources.” http://lnkd.in/m_9BCq. View in LinkedIn

NEW LIFE FORM on the drawing board. “We’re doing a grand experiment. We’re trying to design the first cell from scratch.” J Craig Venter on progress since his proof-of-concept debut in 2010. " " http://lnkd.in/m_9BCq View in LinkedIn

REPLY TO CRITICS. "Venter was quick to acknowledge that he still hadn’t created a microbe that serves an innovative purpose. “Sorry we didn’t design some new creature that never existed before as our opening gambit,” he said with a laugh. “What we published was the proof of concept. It’s like: ‘Gee, it would be really nice if the Wright brothers made a supersonic jet! Because that would have been much more useful!’ ”" " http://lnkd.in/m_9BCq View in LinkedIn

HISTORIC 2010 when new life was created. “The ability to design and create new forms of life,” the prominent physicist Freeman Dyson proclaimed, “marks a turning point in the history of our species and our planet.”" " http://lnkd.in/m_9BCq View in LinkedIn

J CRAIG VENTER discovers more species than anyone else in history on one trip. "Over the past nine years, he and his crew at the institute have collected water samples from thousands of locations, sending them to his lab to be screened and genetically mapped. In total, they have discovered hundreds of thousands of new species (the number is imprecise because the term “species” can be muddy) and about 60 million new genes."" " http://lnkd.in/m_9BCq View in LinkedIn

IN 2010 J CRAIG VENTER got whimsical and "brought a bacterium with synthetic DNA to life. That organism was still mostly a copy of one in nature, but as a flourish, Venter and his team wrote their names into its DNA, along with quotes from James Joyce and J. Robert Oppenheimer and even secret messages. As the bacteria reproduced, the quotes and messages and names remained in the colony’s DNA."" " http://lnkd.in/m_9BCq View in LinkedIn

iTUNES DNA for new life? "(If) a perfume company could design a bacterium to produce an appealing aroma; rather than running this in a large-scale fermenter, they would upload the DNA sequences onto the future equivalent of iTunes... Then, customers could simply synthesize the bugs at home and grow them on their skin. They could transform epidermal ecosystems to have living production of scents and fragrances. Living perfume!”" " http://lnkd.in/m_9BCq View in LinkedIn