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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

BIOMIMICRY. "Nature works with ...only five polymers. In the natural world, life builds from the bottom up and it builds in resilience and multiple uses. What would it be like to use only five polymer classes to build everything?”" " http://lnkd.in/Q_kyhu View in LinkedIn

SYMBIO = PARADIGM SHIFT of enormous proportions, rare in several lifetimes. "But the possibility of designing a new organism, entirely from synthetic DNA, to produce whatever compounds we want, would mark a radical leap forward in biotechnology and a paradigm shift in manufacturing."" " http://lnkd.in/m_9BCq View in LinkedIn

SHIFTING WORKFORCE. "The prevalence of lean management teams, the postrecession drive to cap costs, and the accelerating pace of change combine to make temporary solutions compelling. These new arrangements have also spread because the surge in outsourcing and consulting in recent years has accustomed managers to thinking about work, including high-end work, in modular ways". " " http://lnkd.in/PXCAn5 View in LinkedIn

J CRAIG VENTER is a rare visionary-scientist with a stunning track record. "He dreamed of mapping the human genome, and he did it. He dreamed of creating a synthetic organism, and he made it. In 2003, he scrawled a line across a map of the world, hopped on his boat with a small team and sailed around the planet in search of new forms of life. By the time they returned, two years later, they had discovered more species than anyone in history." WOW. " " http://lnkd.in/m_9BCq View in LinkedIn