Since my own genome was sequenced, my software has been broadcast into space in the form of electromagnetic waves, carrying my genetic information far beyond Earth. Whether there is any creature out there capable of making sense of the instructions in my genome, well, that's another question.

Synthetic biology can help address key challenges facing the planet and its population. Research in synthetic biology may lead to new things such as programmed cells that self-assemble at the sites of disease to repair damage.

I suppose if there's a set of genes I have, it's detesting authority.

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.

When you think of all the things that are made from oil or in the chemical industry, if in the future we could find cells to replace most of those processes, the ideal way would be to do it by direct design.

One of the fundamental discoveries I made about myself - early enough to make use of it - was that I am driven to seize life and to understand it. The motor that pushes me is propelled by more than scientific curiosity.

If I could change the science system, my prescription for changing the whole thing would be organising it around big goals and building teams to do it.

We find all kinds of species that have taken up a second chromosome or a third one from somewhere, adding thousands of new traits in a second to that species. So, people who think of evolution as just one gene changing at a time have missed much of biology.

I am absolutely certain that life can exist in outer space, move around, find a new aqueous environment.

I've gotten some pretty nice awards. I'm having trouble finding places to put them all.

My complaint is that there are more books and news articles than there are primary scientific papers. I am probably the biggest critic of the hypesters, because it's dangerous when fields get overhyped.

There are still so many questions to answer about the workings of the human body and, most mysterious of all, it is influenced by our state of mind.

Everybody is looking for a naturally occurring algae that is going to be a miracle cell to save the world, and after a century of looking, people still haven't found it.

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.

If I had a weak ego, and doubts about this, the first genome would not yet have been completed with US and UK government funding.

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.

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.

There's not going to be any one replacement for oil: we need to have hundreds of solutions to this global issue.

A lot of people spend their last decade of their lives in pain and misery combating disease.

Organisms in the ocean provide over 40 percent of the oxygen we breathe, and they're the major sink for capturing all the carbon dioxide we constantly release into the atmosphere.

A doctor can save maybe a few hundred lives in a lifetime. A researcher can save the whole world.

People think genes are an absolute cause of traits. But the notion that the genome is the blueprint for humanity is a very bad metaphor. If you think we're hard-wired and deterministic, there should indeed be a lot more genes.

Carole Lartigue led the effort to actually transplant a bacterial chromosome from one bacteria to another.

The future of society is 100% dependent on scientific advances.