Frances Arnold Quotes

Human beings have been manipulating the biological world for thousands of years without understanding how DNA codes function.

People have freaked out when I tell them that my dragons are scientifically based... what else can you call a genetically engineered life form?

What the public needs to understand is that these new technologies, especially in recombinant DNA technology, allow scientists to bypass biological boundaries altogether.

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.

If you can write DNA, you're no longer limited to 'what is' but to what you could make.

The genomics revolution, proteomics, metabolomics, all of these 'omics' that sound so terrific on grants and on business plans. What we're doing is we are seizing control of our evolutionary future. I mean we're essentially using technology to just jam evolution into fast-forward.

Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people.

With the advent of genetic engineering the time required for the evolution of new species may literally collapse.

Now that we can read and write the genetic code, put it in digital form and translate it back into synthesized life, it will be possible to speed up biological evolution to the pace of social evolution.

I suspect any worries about genetic engineering may be unnecessary. Genetic mutations have always happened naturally, anyway.

Genetic engineering is a result of science advancement, so I don't think that in itself is bad. If used wisely, genetics can be beneficial, but they can be abused, too.

What's different here is that we have now technologies that allow these life science companies to bypass classical breeding. That's what makes it both powerful and exciting.

We're moving from reading the genetic code to writing it.

New technologies are often met with skepticism. But if the world is to continue the remarkable progress of the past few decades, it is vital that scientists, subject to safety and ethics guidelines, be encouraged to continue taking advantage of such promising tools as CRISPR.

In chemicals, Synthetic Genomics is one of my real loves.

If you get very fine, accurate, and inexpensive control over your genome, you can fundamentally change the kind of organism you are. You are extending human capacity.

Engineering the biological world was even more interesting than engineering the mechanical world.

I decided that I wanted to become an engineer of the biological world, specifically a protein engineer.

This is a whole new era where we're moving beyond little edits on single genes to being able to write whatever we want throughout the genome. The goal is to be able to change it as radically as our understanding permits.

We were making the first step out of the age of chemistry and physics, and into the age of biology.

By being able to write a genome and plug it into an organism, the software, if you will, changes the hardware.

I mean, we're really making a quantum change in our relationship to the plant world with genetic modification.

Genetic modification has many different areas, for example in medicine, and Britain is at the leading edge of this new technology. I don't know, but people tell me, it could indeed by the leading science of the 21st century. All I say to people is: 'Just keep an open mind and let us proceed according to genuine scientific evidence.'

India has the opportunity to be a leader in genetic engineering, It has institutions that no other country has.

In the last century, as we learned more about genes, we were able to devise ways of accelerating evolution.