I have this idea of trying to catalog all the genes on the planet.
I see, in the future, bioengineered almost everything you can imagine that we use.
I was a surf bum wannabe. I left home at age 17 and moved to Southern California to try to take up surfing as a vocation, but this was in 1964, and there was this nasty little thing called the Vietnam War. As a result, I got drafted.
We have trouble feeding, providing fresh, clean water, medicines, fuel for the six and a half billion. It's going to be a stretch to do it for nine.
We have 100 genes or so, which we know we can't knock out without killing the cell, that are of unknown structure.
A doctor can save maybe a few hundred lives in a lifetime. A researcher can save the whole world.
For each gene in your genome, you quite often get a different version of that gene from your father and a different version from your mother. We need to study these relationships across a very large number of people.
There are enzymes called restriction enzymes that actually digest DNA.
I think I'm a survivor. I could have suffered at least 100 professional deaths. I could come up with a list of the 100 times I've come closest to death, from having pneumonia as a child to car crashes.
My greatest fear is not the abuse of technology but that we will not use it at all.
The only 'afterlife' is what other people remember of you.
I am not sure our brains and our psychologies are ready for immortality.
Ethanol's not an ideal fuel.
There's not going to be any one replacement for oil: we need to have hundreds of solutions to this global issue.
The leading edge of the best science in the world is being driven by private money, and investment money because of the scarcity of government money to do this. It's not only by far the best and most advanced science, we're driving the equation at Human Longevity that everyone else is beginning to follow as well.
I thought we'd just sequence the genome once and that would be sufficient for most things in people's lifetimes. Now we're seeing how changeable and adaptable it is, which is why we're surviving and evolving as a species.
Most people don't realize it, because they're invisible, but microbes make up about a half of the Earth's biomass, whereas all animals only make up about one one-thousandth of all the biomass.
People think that Celera's trying to patent the whole human genome because it's been used as - I guess people in Washington learn how to do political attacks, and so it gets used as a political weapon, not as a factual one.
Knowing what your parents have gives you hints of things, but your genome is a totally unique combination of and interchange of DNA from your parents. There is no one else like you genetically.
I am absolutely certain that life can exist in outer space, move around, find a new aqueous environment.
We're moving from reading the genetic code to writing it.
It turns out synthesizing DNA is very difficult. There are tens of thousands of machines around the world that make small pieces of DNA - 30 to 50 letters in length - and it's a degenerate process, so the longer you make the piece, the more errors there are.
The problem with existing biology is you change only one or two genes at a time.
San Francisco is one of my favorite cities on the planet.
Genes can't possibly explain all of what makes us what we are.
I've had a very unusual background in science - not the usual route of planning on being a scientist from age 3. I think my story shows that success is more about personal motivation and determination than it is about where you were born or what your economic status was.
Mitochondrial DNA is in higher concentration, lasts longer, and can be extracted from bones.
People are comprised of sets of DNA from each parent. If you looked at just the DNA from your father, it wouldn't tell you who you really are.
Traditional ways of distinguishing populations are irrelevant in terms of genetic code.
We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before.
You'd need a very specialized electron microscope to get down to the level to actually see a single strand of DNA.
When most people talk about biofuels, they talk about using oils or grease from plants.
I have a blend of klotho gene variants that have been linked with a lower risk for coronary artery disease and stroke and an advantage in longevity.
Society and medicine treat us all as members of populations, whereas as individuals we are all unique, and population statistics do not apply.
The Janus-like nature of innovation - its responsible use and so on - was evident at the very birth of human ingenuity, when humankind first discovered how to make fire on demand.
Race has no genetic or scientific basis.
