Biological Innovation Quotes

We owe our existence to innovation. Our species exists thanks to four billion years of genetic innovation.

The technology of synthetic biology is currently accelerating at four times the rate of Moore's Law. It's been doing that since 2005, and it's likely to continue.

No evolution is accomplished in nature without revolution. Periods of very slow changes are succeeded by periods of violent changes. Revolutions are as necessary for evolution as the slow changes which prepare them and succeed them.

What we're talking about is creating new forms of life on the basis of new values.

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.

The biological world always seems poised to innovate.

As the Industrial Age is drawing to a close, I think that we're witnessing the dawn of the era of biological design.

I think the biggest innovations of the 21st century will be at the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning.

Biomimicry is … the conscious emulation of life’s genius.

Genome design is going to be a key part of the future. That's why we need fast, cheap, accurate DNA synthesis, so you can make a lot of iterations of something and test them.

We're finding a third way for biologists to change the world. It's very hard to change the world when the only directions available in biology are academia and the pharmaceutical industry.

What I want to do is demonstrate that biology can learn how to make a vast array of molecules that people thought were outside the realm of biology.

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

I'm interested in using evolution to move forward into the future, to get biology to do a lot of new chemistry for us.

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.

The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music.

I wanted to rewrite the code of life, to make new molecular machines that would solve human problems.

evolution is a tinkerer, an ad-hocker, and a jury-rigger. It works with what it has on hand, not with what it has in mind. Some of its inventions prove elegant, while in others you can see the seams and dried glue.

It's actually very hard to find an area of the economy that doesn't fundamentally change in the measure that we are able to read and write life code.

How we understand our own selves and how we work with our DNA software has implications that will affect everything from vaccine development to new approaches to antibiotics, new sources of food, new sources of chemicals, even potentially new sources of energy.

The human body is a magazine of inventions, the patent office, where are the models from which every hint is taken. All the tools and engines on earth are only extensions of its limbs and senses.

My whole interest is, how do you use evolution as an innovation engine? How does evolution solve new problems that life faces? And to have a system that can create a whole new chemical bond that biology hasn't done before, to me, demonstrates the power of nature to innovate.

Instead of studying what biology has already made, we have to imagine what biology could make. You can say, 'Oh, I want a cure for cancer,' but that doesn't tell you what evolutionary pathway will take you from here to there. What are the intermediate steps?

For businesses, biomimicry is about bringing a new discipline - biology - to the design table. It's not to write an environmental impact statement, as most biologists in business do right now.

...the emergent capabilities bursting forth from the revolutionary advances in the life sciences are about to make us the principal agent of evolution.