Synthetic Biology Quotes

The coming wave is defined by two core technologies: artificial intelligence (AI) and synthetic biology.

A lot of business opportunities exist at the intersection of synthetic biology and material ecology.

What sets the new synthetic insecticides is their enormous biological potency.

A lot of business opportunities exist at the intersection of synthetic biology and material ecology. And when that's applied at global systems level scale, it has multiplicative value effect for humanity as a whole.

(The genomes of two individual humans differ by an average of about 3 million positions, which is approximately 0.1 percent of the total. Most of these are single base changes or changes in tandem repeat lengths.)

When we invented fire, we messed up repeatedly, then invented the fire extinguisher. With more powerful technologies such as nuclear weapons, synthetic biology and strong artificial intelligence, we should instead plan ahead and aim to get things right the first time, because it may be the only chance we will get. Our future is a race between the growing power of our technology and the wisdom with which we use it. Let’s make sure that wisdom wins.

Over a century ago, scientists first began to argue that the patent system and scientific data should be opened up. Back then, it was popular for conservatives to claim that putting geneng into the hands of the public would result in mega-viruses or total species collapse. Open data would be the gateway to a runaway synthetic biology apocalypse. But now we know there has been no one great disaster—only the slow-motion disaster of capitalism converting every living thing and idea into property.

Synthetic biology56 is built around the idea that DNA is essentially software—nothing more than a four-letter code arranged in a specific order. Much like with computers, the code drives the machine. In biology, the order of the code governs the cell’s manufacturing processes, instructing it to make specific proteins and such. But, as with all software, DNA can be reprogrammed. Nature’s original code can be swapped out for new, human-written code. We can co-opt the machinery of life, telling it to produce—well, whatever we can think of.

The genome constitutes only about 1 percent of the dry weight of a cell, which means that only a tiny proportion of the cell is actually synthetic.

The appearance of DNA some 3,900 million years ago makes it the most ancient of all ancient texts.

The Pleistocene epoch lasted from about 2.5 million years ago to about 10,000 years ago.

The Pleistocene witnessed the rise of the charismatic megafauna, animal species that included the woolly mammoth, Neanderthal man, and Homo sapiens.

Having journeyed from inorganic to organic and having considered the handedness of simple monomers, we now take a look at polymers, the next big idea in the story of the past and future of life.

Before getting into CRISPR, Zayner tried a variety of synthetic biology experiments, including on himself. To treat his gastrointestinal problems, he performed a fecal transplant (don’t ask) to transform his gut’s microbiome. He did the procedure in a hotel room with two filmmakers documenting the scene, and (in case you really do want to know how it works) it became a short documentary called Gut Hack that can be found online.2

The patenting of genes and other human tissue has already begun to turn human nature into property. The misuse of genetic information will enable insurers and employers to exercise the ultimate form of discrimination.

An emptiness comes from this combination of over-the-top nonnatural sources of reward and the inevitability of habituation; this is because unnaturally strong explosions of synthetic experience and sensation and pleasure evoke unnaturally strong degrees of habituation.90 This has two consequences. First, soon we barely notice the fleeting whispers of pleasure caused by leaves in autumn, or by the lingering glance of the right person, or by the promise of reward following a difficult, worthy task. And the other consequence is that we eventually habituate to even those artificial deluges of intensity. If we were designed by engineers, as we consumed more, we’d desire less. But our frequent human tragedy is that the more we consume, the hungrier we get. More and faster and stronger. What was an unexpected pleasure yesterday is what we feel entitled to today, and what won’t be enough tomorrow.

Most dangerously, for the first time, these accidents and abuses are widely within the reach of individuals or small groups. They will not require large facilities or rare raw materials. Knowledge alone will enable the use of them.

The world has been changing even faster as people, devices and information are increasingly connected to each other. Computational power is growing and quantum computing is quickly being realised. This will revolutionise artificial intelligence with exponentially faster speeds. It will advance encryption. Quantum computers will change everything, even human biology. There is already one technique to edit DNA precisely, called CRISPR. The basis of this genome-editing technology is a bacterial defence system. It can accurately target and edit stretches of genetic code. The best intention of genetic manipulation is that modifying genes would allow scientists to treat genetic causes of disease by correcting gene mutations. There are, however, less noble possibilities for manipulating DNA. How far we can go with genetic engineering will become an increasingly urgent question. We can’t see the possibilities of curing motor neurone diseases—like my ALS—without also glimpsing its dangers. Intelligence is characterised as the ability to adapt to change. Human intelligence is the result of generations of natural selection of those with the ability to adapt to changed circumstances. We must not fear change. We need to make it work to our advantage. We all have a role to play in making sure that we, and the next generation, have not just the opportunity but the determination to engage fully with the study of science at an early level, so that we can go on to fulfil our potential and create a better world for the whole human race. We need to take learning beyond a theoretical discussion of how AI should be and to make sure we plan for how it can be. We all have the potential to push the boundaries of what is accepted, or expected, and to think big. We stand on the threshold of a brave new world. It is an exciting, if precarious, place to be, and we are the pioneers. When we invented fire, we messed up repeatedly, then invented the fire extinguisher. With more powerful technologies such as nuclear weapons, synthetic biology and strong artificial intelligence, we should instead plan ahead and aim to get things right the first time, because it may be the only chance we will get. Our future is a race between the growing power of our technology and the wisdom with which we use it. Let’s make sure that wisdom wins.

MSG tricks our taste buds into finding a nutritionally vapid substance loaded with semi-synthetic ingredients designed to be ravishingly delicious. Inevitably, over time, real food appears less attractive and less satisfying of our cravings.

When someone dies they get very cold and very still. That probably sounds obvious, but when it’s your mother it doesn’t feel obvious—it feels shocking. You watch, winded and reeling, as the medical technicians neutralize the stasis field and power down the synthetic organ metabolizer. But the sentimental gesture of kissing her forehead makes you recoil because the moment your lips touch her skin you realize just how cold and just how still she is, just how permanent that coldness and that stillness feel. Your body lurches like it’s been plunged into boiling water and for the first time in your life you understand death as a biological state, an organism ceasing to function. Unless you’ve touched a corpse before, you can’t comprehend the visceral wrongness of inert flesh wrapped around an inanimate object that wears your mother’s face. You feel sick with guilt and regret and sadness about inconsequential anecdote. You can’t remember anything thoughtful or sweet or tender that you ever did even though logically you know you must have. All you can recall is how often you were small and petty and false. She was your mother and she loved you in a way nobody ever has and nobody ever will and now she’s gone.

As the daughter of Perses and Asteria, Hecate (Hekate) was the only of the Titans to remain free under Zeus. She was the mother of the wizard Circe and of the witch Medea, and was considered to be the underworld sorceress of all that is demonic.

In this ultimate identity crisis, we would “no longer have the characteristics that give us human dignity” because, for one thing, “people dehumanized à la Brave New World¼don’t know that they are dehumanized, and, what is worse, would not care if they knew.

An emptiness comes from this combination of over-the-top nonnatural sources of reward and the inevitability of habituation; this is because unnaturally strong explosions of synthetic experience and sensation and pleasure evoke unnaturally strong degrees of habituation.

lead to nonhuman “persons” and “nonperson” humans, unhinging the existing argument behind intrinsic sanctity of human life and paving the way for such things as harvesting organs from people like Terry Schiavo whenever the loss of cognitive ability equals the dispossession of “personhood.

wants transgenic chimps and great apes uplifted genetically so that they achieve “personhood.” The underlying goal behind this theory would be to establish that basic cognitive aptitude should equal “personhood” and that this “cognitive standard” and not “human-ness” should be the key to constitutional protections and privileges.

Parsons (born Marvel Whiteside Parsons on October 2, 1914 – died June 17, 1952) was an American rocket propulsion researcher at the California Institute of Technology. He was one of the principal founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Aerojet Corp. As an enthusiastic occultist and Thelemite he was one of the first Americans to

A version of this text is found in each nucleated cell of our bodies, and it consists of 700 megabytes of information (6 billion DNA base pairs). It contains not only a rich historical archive but also practical recipes for making human beings. For such a significant text, its translation into modern languages began only recently, in the 1970s.

The third industrial revolution (1750–1850) was one of the great turning points in human history. Key elements of the transformation were the change from artisanal, custom-made, hand-tooled methods of producing material goods to machine-tooled, assembly-line, and standardized mass production systems. These changes allowed for unprecedented levels of income growth and wealth accumulation, sustained increases in agricultural production, human population growth, and enhanced well-being.

After the plates are removed by the silent and swift waiting staff, General Çiller leans forward and says across the table to Güney, ‘What’s this I’m reading in Hürriyet about Strasbourg breaking up the nation?’ ‘It’s not breaking up the nation. It’s a French motion to implement European Regional Directive 8182 which calls for a Kurdish Regional Parliament.’ ‘And that’s not breaking up the nation?’ General Çiller throws up his hands in exasperation. He’s a big, square man, the model of the military, but he moves freely and lightly ‘The French prancing all over the legacy of Atatürk? What do you think, Mr Sarioğlu?’ The trap could not be any more obvious but Ayşe sees Adnan straighten his tie, the code for, Trust me, I know what I’m doing, ‘What I think about the legacy of Atatürk, General? Let it go. I don’t care. The age of Atatürk is over.’ Guests stiffen around the table, breath subtly indrawn; social gasps. This is heresy. People have been shot down in the streets of Istanbul for less. Adnan commands every eye. ‘Atatürk was father of the nation, unquestionably. No Atatürk, no Turkey. But, at some point every child has to leave his father. You have to stand on your own two feet and find out if you’re a man. We’re like kids that go on about how great their dads are; my dad’s the strongest, the best wrestler, the fastest driver, the biggest moustache. And when someone squares up to us, or calls us a name or even looks at us squinty, we run back shouting ‘I’ll get my dad, I’ll get my dad!’ At some point; we have to grow up. If you’ll pardon the expression, the balls have to drop. We talk the talk mighty fine: great nation, proud people, global union of the noble Turkic races, all that stuff. There’s no one like us for talking ourselves up. And then the EU says, All right, prove it. The door’s open, in you come; sit down, be one of us. Move out of the family home; move in with the other guys. Step out from the shadow of the Father of the Nation. ‘And do you know what the European Union shows us about ourselves? We’re all those things we say we are. They weren’t lies, they weren’t boasts. We’re good. We’re big. We’re a powerhouse. We’ve got an economy that goes all the way to the South China Sea. We’ve got energy and ideas and talent - look at the stuff that’s coming out of those tin-shed business parks in the nano sector and the synthetic biology start-ups. Turkish. All Turkish. That’s the legacy of Atatürk. It doesn’t matter if the Kurds have their own Parliament or the French make everyone stand in Taksim Square and apologize to the Armenians. We’re the legacy of Atatürk. Turkey is the people. Atatürk’s done his job. He can crumble into dust now. The kid’s come right. The kid’s come very right. That’s why I believe the EU’s the best thing that’s ever happened to us because it’s finally taught us how to be Turks.’ General Çiller beats a fist on the table, sending the cutlery leaping. ‘By God, by God; that’s a bold thing to say but you’re exactly right.

The Pyrenean ibex, an extinct form of wild mountain goat, was brought back to life in 2009 through cloning of dna taken from skin samples. This was followed in June of 2010 by researchers at Jeju National University in Korea cloning a bull that had been dead for two years. Cloning methods are also being studied for use in bringing back Tasmanian tigers, woolly mammoths, and other extinct creatures, and in the March/April 2010 edition of the respected Archaeology magazine, a feature article by Zah Zorich (“Should We Clone Neanderthals?”) called for the resurrection via cloning of what some consider to be man’s closest extinct relative, the Neanderthals. National Geographic confirmed this possibility in its May 2009 special report, “Recipe for a Resurrection,” quoting Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University, an authority on ancient dna who served as a scientific consultant for the movie Jurassic Park, saying: “I laughed when Steven Spielberg said that cloning extinct animals was inevitable. But I’m not laughing anymore.… This is going to happen.

We have no certainty we’ll contact extraterrestrial beings from one of the billion earthlike planets in the sky in the next 200 years, but we have almost 100 percent certainty that we’ll manufacture an alien intelligence by then. When we face these synthetic aliens, we’ll encounter the same benefits and challenges that we expect from contact with ET. They will force us to reevaluate our roles, our beliefs, our goals, our identity. What are humans for? I believe our first answer will be: Humans are for inventing new kinds of intelligences that biology could not evolve. Our job is to make machines that think different—to create alien intelligences.

My laboratory is interested in the related challenges of understanding the origin of life on the early earth, and constructing synthetic cellular life in the laboratory. Focusing on artificial life frees us to explore novel chemical systems, but what we learn from these systems helps us to understand possible pathways leading to the origin of life. Our basic design for a synthetic cell involves the encapsulation of a spontaneously replicating nucleic acid, which acts as the genetic material, within a spontaneously replicating membrane vesicle, which provides spatial localization. We are using chemical synthesis to make nucleic acids with modified nucleobases and sugar-phosphate backbones.

In an extremely short period of geologic time the Earth has been saturated with several billion pounds of nonbiodegradable, often biologically unique pharmaceuticals designed to kill bacteria. Many antibiotics (literally meaning “against life”) do not discriminate in their activity, but kill broad groups of diverse bacteria whenever they are used. The worldwide environmental dumping, over the past 65 years, of such huge quantities of synthetic antibiotics has initiated the most pervasive impacts on the Earth’s bacterial underpinnings since oxygen-generating bacteria supplanted methanogens 2.5 billion years ago. As bacterial researcher Stuart Levy comments . . . It has stimulated evolutionary changes that are unparalleled in recorded biologic history.4

Still, it is possible to outlaw entire technologies. In 2006 Kevin Kelly, the former editor of Wired magazine, did a study of the effectiveness of technology prohibitions across the last thousand years, beginning in the year 1000. During this period governments had banned numerous technologies and inventions, including crossbows, guns, mines, nuclear bombs, electricity, automobiles, large sailing ships, bathtubs, blood transfusions, vaccines, television, computers, and the Internet. Kelly found that few technology prohibitions had any staying power and that in general, the more recent the prohibition, the shorter its duration. Figure Epilogue Kevin Kelly’s chart of the duration of a technology prohibition plotted against the year in which it was imposed.

There is only one historical development that has real significance. Today, when we finally realise that the keys to happiness are in the hands of our biochemical system, we can stop wasting our time on politics and social reforms, putsches and ideologies, and focus instead on the only thing that can make us truly happy: manipulating our biochemistry. If we invest billions in understanding our brain chemistry and developing appropriate treatments, we can make people far happier than ever before, without any need of revolutions. Prozac, for example, does not change regimes, but by raising serotonin levels it lifts people out of their depression. Nothing captures the biological argument better than the famous New Age slogan: ‘Happiness begins within.’ Money, social status, plastic surgery, beautiful houses, powerful positions – none of these will bring you happiness. Lasting happiness comes only from serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin.1 In Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World, published in 1932 at the height of the Great Depression, happiness is the supreme value and psychiatric drugs replace the police and the ballot as the foundation of politics. Every day, each person takes a dose of ‘soma’, a synthetic drug which makes people happy without harming their productivity and efficiency. The World State that governs the entire globe is never threatened by wars, revolutions, strikes or demonstrations, because all people are supremely content with their current conditions, whatever they may be. Huxley’s vision of the future is far more troubling than George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Huxley’s world seems monstrous to most readers, but it is hard to explain why. Everybody is happy all the time – what could be wrong with that?

In Elizabethan times lovers were so enamored of each other’s body odors that it was common for a woman to keep a peeled apple in her armpit until it had absorbed her sweat and smell. She would give this “love apple” to her lover to sniff at in her absence. We, on the other hand, use synthetic aromas of fruits and flowers to mask our body odor from our lovers. Which of these two approaches is acquired and which is natural is not so easy to determine. A substance as “naturally” repugnant to us as the urine of cows is used by the Masai tribe in East Africa as a lotion for their hair—a direct consequence of the cow’s importance in their culture. Many tastes we think “natural” are acquired through learning and become “second nature” to us. We are unable to distinguish our “second nature” from our “original nature” because our neuroplastic brains, once rewired, develop a new nature, every bit as biological as our original.

Once, during a concert of cathedral organ music, as I sat getting gooseflesh amid that tsunami of sound, I was struck with a thought: for a medieval peasant, this must have been the loudest human-made sound they ever experienced, awe-inspiring in now-unimaginable ways. No wonder they signed up for the religion being proffered. And now we are constantly pummeled with sounds that dwarf quaint organs. Once, hunter-gatherers might chance upon honey from a beehive and thus briefly satisfy a hardwired food craving. And now we have hundreds of carefully designed commercial foods that supply a burst of sensation unmatched by some lowly natural food. Once, we had lives that, amid considerable privation, also offered numerous subtle, hard-won pleasures. And now we have drugs that cause spasms of pleasure and dopamine release a thousandfold higher than anything stimulated in our old drug-free world. An emptiness comes from this combination of over-the-top nonnatural sources of reward and the inevitability of habituation; this is because unnaturally strong explosions of synthetic experience and sensation and pleasure evoke unnaturally strong degrees of habituation.90 This has two consequences. First, soon we barely notice the fleeting whispers of pleasure caused by leaves in autumn, or by the lingering glance of the right person, or by the promise of reward following a difficult, worthy task. And the other consequence is that we eventually habituate to even those artificial deluges of intensity. If we were designed by engineers, as we consumed more, we’d desire less. But our frequent human tragedy is that the more we consume, the hungrier we get. More and faster and stronger. What was an unexpected pleasure yesterday is what we feel entitled to today, and what won’t be enough tomorrow.

James Tour is a leading origin-of-life researcher with over 630 research publications and over 120 patents. He was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors in 2015, listed in “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” by Thomson Reuters in 2014, and named “Scientist of the Year” by R&D Magazine. Here is how he recently described the state of the field: We have no idea how the molecules that compose living systems could have been devised such that they would work in concert to fulfill biology’s functions. We have no idea how the basic set of molecules, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins were made and how they could have coupled in proper sequences, and then transformed into the ordered assemblies until there was the construction of a complex biological system, and eventually to that first cell. Nobody has any idea on how this was done when using our commonly understood mechanisms of chemical science. Those that say that they understand are generally wholly uninformed regarding chemical synthesis. Those that say, “Oh this is well worked out,” they know nothing—nothing—about chemical synthesis—nothing. … From a synthetic chemical perspective, neither I nor any of my colleagues can fathom a prebiotic molecular route to construction of a complex system. We cannot even figure out the prebiotic routes to the basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins. Chemists are collectively bewildered. Hence I say that no chemist understands prebiotic synthesis of the requisite building blocks, let alone assembly into a complex system. That’s how clueless we are. I have asked all of my colleagues—National Academy members, Nobel Prize winners—I sit with them in offices. Nobody understands this. So if your professors say it’s all worked out, if your teachers say it’s all worked out, they don’t know what they’re talking about.23

The idea that human-transforming technology that mingles the dna of natural and synthetic beings and merges man with machines could somehow be used or even inspired by evil supernaturalism to foment destruction within the material world is for some people so exotic as to be inconceivable. Yet nothing should be more fundamentally clear, as students of

Synthetic biology was the transistor of the twenty-first century. Yet political realities in America made it increasingly unfeasible for entrepreneurs there to tinker with the building blocks of life. Every cluster of human cells was viewed as a baby in America. A quarter of the population wasn’t vaccinated. A majority of Americans didn’t believe in evolution. Social-media-powered opinions carried more influence than peer-reviewed scientific research. In this virulently anti-science atmosphere, synbio research was hounded offshore before it had really begun. Activists crowed over their victory.

Now, the thing about celery is that it’s especially good at kicking psoralen production into high gear when it feels under attack. Bruised stalks of celery can have 100 times the amount of psoralen of untouched stalks. Farmers who use synthetic pesticides, while creating a whole host of other problems, are essentially protecting plants from attack. Organic farmers don’t use synthetic pesticides. So that means organic celery farmers are leaving their growing stalks vulnerable to attack by insects and fungi—and when those stalks are inevitably munched on, they respond by producing massive amounts of psoralen. By keeping poison off the plant, the organic celery farmer is all but guaranteeing a biological process that will end with lots of poison in the plant.

According to a standard account (which is probably correct), genetic engineering in the modern sense was born in 1972, when two biologists met for a late-night snack at a delicatessen near Waikiki beach in Hawaii. Stanford University medical professor Stanley Cohen and biochemist Herbert Boyer, of the University of California–San Francisco, were in Honolulu to attend a conference on plasmids, the circular strands of DNA found in the cytoplasm of bacteria.

Through his lenses Leeuwenhoek saw one-celled protozoa, blood cells, sperm cells, and many other “animalcules,” as he called them. In 1683, pressing against the limit of his ability to discriminate the fine structure of this microscopic underworld, Leeuwenhoek saw bacteria (derived from tooth scrapings), and he vividly described and drew relatively accurate pictures of them.

A cell’s membrane, which constitutes its outer surface, is composed of lipid molecules.

Second, “this work provides a proof of principle for producing cells based on genome sequences designed in the computer. DNA sequencing of a cellular genome allows storage of the genetic instructions of life as a digital file.” The reduction of genetic instructions to a digital file delivered a knockout second blow to vitalism.

Building a living cell that is genuinely synthetic is one of the goals of synthetic biology.

Some protozoa, for example, have genomes that are over one hundred times larger than the human genome,

The synthetic minimal cell would enable the production of materials too large or otherwise incompatible with the more elaborate functioning systems of a complex cell. It also represents our best shot at a general nanotech assembler, the dream of Eric Drexler and many nanotechnology enthusiasts since he first described it in his 1986 book Engines of Creation. We could then harness these synthetic minimal cells and put them to use in drug, vaccine, chemical, and biofuel development.

The longest cells are nerve cells, or neurons, some of which stretch from spine to toe.

Second, cells are made of proteins, which constitute some 20 percent of a given cell by weight. The term “protein” comes from a Greek word that means “primary” or “first thing,” and a typical bacterium may possess several thousand different types of them.

Individual E. coli cells are small, rod-shaped objects about four micrometers in length, easily visible in a light microscope. Extending from the cell’s surface are a number of long, corkscrew-shaped flagella. They propel the cell through a watery medium that, to them, is as viscous as molasses. At this scale, where gravity has little effect, there is no up or down. Since the average E. coli cell lives inside the human intestinal tract, the cell has no vision, and since it has no brain or nervous system, it has no conscious experience. But believe it or not, the bacterium has a primitive sense of perception.

The rest of the organism was as natural as any other ordinary cell. Indeed, Venter’s synthetic genome depended on the rest of the recipient cell’s natural and native apparatus for its expression: it depended on the cell’s molecular machinery of transcription, translation, and replication, its ribosomes, metabolic pathways, its energy supplies, and so on.

How then do we create a truly minimal living cell that is also genuinely synthetic?

In general, cells are small objects. Bacteria range from 0.5 to 750 microns, human cells from 5 microns to 1 meter in length. (A micron is a millionth of a meter; for comparison purposes, a human red blood cell is about 5 microns across.)

First in importance are the nucleic acids, DNA and RNA, which contain the genetic information, the software of life.

Collectively, these three cellular elements—nucleic acids, proteins, and the lipid bilayer membrane—exist for the purpose of maintaining the cell as a living system, but for this it needs a fourth class of materials, sugars (saccharides, typically glucose or sucrose).

To be a cell, then, is to be a deterministic system governed by DNA, composed largely of proteins and lipids, and energized by ATP. Some cells are more like us than you may imagine—E. coli, for example, the standard organism of genetic engineering.

In nature, E. coli has 4,377 genes on a genome consisting of 4,639,221 base pairs. Blattner reduced the gene count of the laboratory K-12 strain by some 15 percent, thereby producing an organism that was optimized for laboratory, industrial, and academic research purposes.

Inside it, however, everything careens relentlessly toward self-replication, for within the space of about thirty minutes, the cell manages to duplicate with extreme precision each and every one of its component parts: its proteins, lipid molecules, even its own genome. And at the end of the process, the cell pinches itself in two, giving birth to a daughter cell clone, which will reproduce itself in another half hour.

Standing next to him is Dr. Petranek, nonbinary, in hir mid-thirties with the broad cheekbones of Eastern European heritage and curly brown hair. Ze, too, is tall and confident, standing with hir thumbs hooked into hir belt loops and laughing heartily at something Banks has said. Dr. Petranek is one of the best Noropean engineers of hir generation and the designer of several systems used to keep us alive here, I recall from the show. Secondary specializations in synthetic biology and human biology.

Life is about power. Those who have it and those trying to get it. With synthetic biology, someone will win. She or he will be the queen. The rest of us will be workers.

But despite attempts to convince the public that milk is milk, be it human breast milk, cow’s milk, or formula, nothing could be further from the truth. Artificial formulas do not contain the powerful energy resources or immune protection found in mother’s milk. In fact, a nutritional imbalance in synthetic formula feeding is associated with deaths from diarrhea in infants in both developing and developed countries. (Victora, et al, 1989)

4. Priceless versus worthless: The cost of materials today ranges from $0.1 per kg for wood to $4 trillion per kg for certain pharmaceuticals (reimbursable by health insurance). With revolutions in smart materials and molecular engineering, all materials and objects could be reduced to the range of $0.2 per kg (electronics, clothes, foods, cosmetics, and so on)—or people could spend more and more for less and less via clever branding, copyright and patent laws, elaborate licensing and regulatory schemes, and the like. Or is there a way of artfully combining and integrating all of the above?

Technologies also make sharing more personally valuable, for example, discussing which new drugs to take for cancer, AIDS, or depression. In forums such as PatientsLikeMe and PersonalGenomes.org, individuals communicate information to benefit people around the world.

—Students are being required in some schools and universities to use biometric id employing rfid for electronic monitoring.

—Will it matter if there is an “enhanced divide” between “new” people classifications?

the immaculate conception of her Son, Jesus

how often the “person” who delivers God’s special words of counsel at just the right moment might actually be an angel on assignment.

Such verses reflect the ancient (and we believe accurate) Jewish belief that God assigns protective angels to those who belong to Him.

Kingdom Age” theology (also known as Reconstructionism, Kingdom Now Theology, Theonomy, Dominion Theology, and most recently, Dominionism), which singularly has wrought some of the most far-reaching destruction within the body of Christ this century.

but by reforming the very essence of our beings: our dna.

—Starting in 2006, the U.S. government began requiring passports to include rfid chips.

If human dna could be universally corrupted or “demonized,” they reasoned, no Savior would be born and mankind would be lost forever.

This unique text in Matthew connecting the rock upon which the church would be built, the name of Jonah, and the gates of hell is not coincidence.

scientists inside Britain are comfortable now with up to 50/50 animal-human integration.

may be considered a rising religion because of its numerous parallels to religious themes and values involving godlike beings, the plan for eternal life, the religious sense of awe surrounding its promises, symbolic rituals among its members, an inspirational worldview based on faith, and technology that promises to heal the wounded, restore sight to the blind, and give hearing back to the deaf.

But remember that there has been a worldwide shift from rural to urban life (worldwide, 3 percent urban in 1800 to 80 percent urban projected for 2050). In the course of this shift, the average number of children per family drops from an average near 7 to well below the break-even point of 2.1, and often as low as 1.2. This means that overpopulation may not be the problem that many people reflexively imagine it to be. Indeed, population may implode rather than explode, reversing the conventional wisdom on this topic.

apotropaic (an adjective meaning “to ward off evil”) devices

To Peter, He said, “Upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Even now, the synthetic forces that will plot man’s wholesale annihilation are quietly under design in leading laboratories, public and private, funded by the most advanced nations on earth, including the official governments of the United States, France, Britain, Australia, and China, to name a few.

So they invent a material substitute that offers the benefits of faith, without the burden of sin,

tragic scheme concocted by sinister forces that seek to defer the church from its true power while enriching insincere bureaucrats.

People have been worried about overpopulation ever since Malthus and his “Essay on the Principle of Population,” which was published in 1798 (and in which he said, amid an outpouring of dire forecasts: “I happen to have a very bad fit of the tooth-ache at the time I am writing this”). Thomas Malthus died in 1834 worried about the world population of 1 billion people doubling every three hundred years. Currently at 7 billion and doubling every forty-seven years, we are now well beyond the situation that worried him. But instead of the global starvation and misery he envisioned, we have seen rises in wealth, standard of living, health, personal hygiene, and life expectancy. There is a reason for this: as economist Julian Simon once explained, “Resources come out of people’s minds more than out of the ground or air. Minds matter economically as much as or more than hands or mouths. Human beings create more than they use, on average.

website Kickstarter.com (“A New Way to Fund and Follow Creativity”), where inventors, entrepreneurs, and dreamers of every stripe could post their wild schemes and pet projects and ask for money to fund them. BioCurious announced an initial goal of $30,000. The partners were soon oversubscribed, almost overwhelmed, with 239 backers pledging $35,319. In the fall of 2010 Gentry and her partners were looking to lease 3,000 square feet of industrial space in Mountain View, but in the end settled for a 2,400 square feet in Sunnyvale, calling it “Your Bay Area hackerspace for biotech.” In December 2010, meanwhile, another DIY biohacker lab, Genspace, opened in Brooklyn, New York. The founders referred to it as “the world’s first permanent, biosafety level 1 community laboratory” (genspace.org). Many others soon followed, in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. With free synthetic biology kits, DIYbio, Livly lab, BioCurious, Genspace, and others, the synthetic biology genie was well and truly out of the bottle.

even a documentary film, Transcendent Man (2009), and a science fiction film, Transcendence, in which a brain implant allows you to control a computer network.

These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation.

the viewpoint that personhood begins after implantation,

As with the eighteenth-century Enlightenment in which intellectual and scientific reason elevated the authority of scientists over priests, techno-utopians believe they will triumph over prophets of doom by “stealing fire from the gods, breathing life into inert matter, and gaining immortality. Our efforts to become something more than human have a long and distinguished genealogy.

formerly

Their religious spirit had only ever come for what it could get, gain, take, and absorb, and then it turned “to kill and to destroy” (John 10:10a).

The authors of this book believe the “brighter and more virtuous beings” Professor Walker and others are arguing for possess supernatural elements and that the spirit behind the transhumanist nightmare will put the “hell” in the “hell scenario” sooner than most comprehend.

Some believe the corruption of antediluvian dna by Watchers was an effort to cut off the birth line of the Messiah.

if it were not for male-dominated, Styrofoam-producing, beef-eating, gas-guzzling human beings, the earth would be a better place.

But for those with eyes to see, the father of lies always gives himself away through his envy of others, seeking what he can gain from—not what he can give to—believers and religion, then pretending something is wrong with those he cannot control, those who get things done like Jesus did, disparaging them while he himself accomplishes nothing but division, diversion, and destruction.

could no longer be “saved” or go to heaven,

Elon is one of the few people that I feel is more accomplished than I am,” said Craig Venter, the man who decoded the human genome and went on to create synthetic lifeforms. At some point he hopes to work with Musk on a type of DNA printer that could be sent to Mars. It would, in theory, allow humans to create medicines, food, and helpful microbes for early settlers of the planet. “I think biological teleportation is what is going to truly enable the colonization of space,” he said. “Elon and I have been talking about how this might play out.

But let’s consider replacing complexity with the notion of replicated complexity (which can be shortened to “replexity”), or

Getting E. coli to churn out jet fuel is nothing compared to T4 phage viruses getting the same bacterium to fabricate more of themselves; the phages are far more complex entities than simple kerosene molecules.

When the stars align, Cthulhu will rise again to resume His dominion over the Earth, ushering in an age of frenzied abandon. Humankind will be “free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy.” —Transhumanist Mark Dery,

How did nature manage to evolve such complicated architecture? Mandelbrot's point is that the complications exist only in the context of traditional Euclidean geometry. As fractals, branching structures can be described with transparent simplicity, with just a few bits of information. Perhaps the simplest transformations that gave rise to the shapes devised by Koch, Peano, and Sierpinski have their analogue in the coded instructions of an organism's genes. DNA surely cannot specify the vast number of bronchi, bronchioles, and alveoli or the particular spatial structure of the resulting tree, but it can specify a repeating process of bifurcation and development. Such processes suit nature's purposes. When E.I. Dupont de Nemours & Company and the United States Army finally began to produce a synthetic match for goose down, it was by finally realizing that the phenomenal air-trapping ability of the natural product came from the fractal nodes and branches of down's key protein, keratin. Mandelbrot glided matter-of-factly from pulmonary and vascular trees to real botanical trees, trees that need to capture sun and resist wind, with fractal branches and fractal leaves. And theoretical biologists began to speculate that fractal scaling was not just common but universal in morphogenesis. They argued that understanding how such patterns were encoded and processed had become a major challenge to biology.