TED Talks and God Speaks

I was browsing TED Talks and came across this video.

The guy is basically designing new forms of life, at the level of bacteria but still he managed to transfer a chromosome from one to another and get the new chromosome to overwrite the existing one by making it think the existing one was foreign. He’s also written his own chromosome and is hoping to implant that and ‘boot it up’ in the same way. In case you wondered, its over 500,000 letters long. Thats 140 pages at size 10 type.

The first half of the video is amazing. The implications are far reaching. He even said the scientists working on the project ‘watermarked’ the genetic code (made of G A T C) by arranging different inert groupings of letters to sign their names in the chromosome. Biological Meta-data!

The second half is an interview style scenario and at the end, about 31 mins in, the interviewer asks “Aren’t you playing God?” to which he replies “We’re not playing”.

Theres also a question about security and new forms of bio-weaponry.

Amazing stuff I think you’ll agree.