Sign in with Facebook
Jamie A. Davies’s Followers (7)
Jamie A. Davies
More books by Jamie A. Davies…
“There is occasional speculation that synthetic biology might be used to adapt a natural pathogen to be active only against a specific human race. This is based on a misunderstanding of our species; humans do not have separate ‘races’ in the sense that a geneticist would recognize. Our species is a continuum: some versions of genes (alleles) do turn up at different frequencies in different ethnic groups, but this is a statistical property only. There are no absolute genetic differences that separate peoples on opposite sides of even a ‘racial’ conflict that would make one side vulnerable and the other safe.”
― Synthetic Biology: A Very Short Introduction
― Synthetic Biology: A Very Short Introduction
“Earlier in this book, I introduced the idea of synthetic biology having ‘two souls’, one focused on engineering new features into existing life and the other aiming to create life de novo. Though the first attracts the bulk of current effort and funding because of its industrial, environmental, and medical potential, the goal of creating life is arguably far more significant in terms of long-term scientific and philosophical impact. It is poised to be another step in the long journey from Copernicus (the Earth is just one part of the universe, not its centre) and Darwin (humans are animals, and share their origins) to an irrefutable demonstration that life is just normal matter, albeit organized in a particular way. Most scientists already take this as a working assumption; however, it has not yet been proven, and it will not be until someone creates life from non-living matter.”
― Synthetic Biology: A Very Short Introduction
― Synthetic Biology: A Very Short Introduction
“Embryonic stem cells have made a major impact on biomedical research over the past decade or so. Scientists routinely make specific, designed alterations to the genes of mouse ES cells and then inject some of these cells into the inner cell mass of a normal mouse embryo. The mouse that results has a body that is a mixture of normal cells, from the un-manipulated inner cell mass, and the genetically modified cells from the engineered ES cells.”
― Life Unfolding: How the human body creates itself
― Life Unfolding: How the human body creates itself
Is this you? Let us know. If not, help out and invite Jamie to Goodreads.
