One of the most authoritative and entertaining books on synthetic biology is Regenesis written by George Church. Dr Church is a Harvard professor who easily fits into the top 5 humans alive today on Genetics. His lab has many ground breaking inventions / developments in genetics, synthetic life and disease treatment. Earlier this year I […]

Energy is the source of many world conflicts. We are a society based on fossil fuels, a non renewable resource with climate implications. With Exponential Technology we can change all that. It’s hard to truly appreciate the power of technology to turn an industry upside down, but this is exactly what happened with Natural Gas. […]

Cancer is a terrible burden. 1 in 2 will get it, 1 in 3 will die. Cancer is caused by changes or mutations in your DNA. A mutation occurs when a DNA letter is changed, deleted or inserted. With the wrong changes a cell can begin copying itself uncontrollably. The gas pedal may be stuck on […]

Aging is the number one cause of dying. In the modern world the average lifespan today is around 80. The Japanese, Swiss and Italians have the longest lifespans. In worldwide rankings, Canada ranked #11 and the USA #40. Thinking Exponentially, huge strides in increasing average lifespan have been made. From 38 in 1850, 59 by 1930, 68 by 1970, […]

I had the distinct pleasure of reading the recently released Frankenstein’s Cat by Emily Anthes. Its a fun light read on how Synthetic Biology will impact animals and humans. Frankenstein’s Cat is a great deep dive into the world genetics:  gene manipulation, engineering lifeforms and synthetic life. Emily does a great job in getting across the […]

Yes, that is a plate of tofu. It’s made of proteins – the same proteins that make you. You are literally a massive collection of proteins, they are the building blocks of every cell in your body. Proteins are created from the instructions found in DNA called genes. In total there are 23,000 genes in each […]

In leveraging DNA it helps to know how the stuff works. It’s remarkably simple yet generates every living thing around you. From a simple code nature has created effectively infinite combinations. It only takes 5 minutes to learn but you will gain a deep understanding of the process of life and be a hit at […]

The various techniques to read DNA are not equal. I want to give you quick overview of each approach and the major companies. If you need a quick recap to What is DNA, now would be a good time. There are three primary ways to read DNA. SNPs, Exoms and Genomes. In all cases the […]

In my humble opinion, the best $100 investment you can ever make is to get yourself SNP’d. No scissors involved. UPDATE: In November 2013, 23andMe was ordered to stop selling genetic testing kits by the FDA. Currently a much more limited product is available. SNP DNA testing is a process by which your DNA is scanned looking for […]

Our ability to read DNA has become one the fastest growing technologies ever. Reading all the DNA for a single human is called reading a person’s genome. A human genome is big, it’s roughly 6 billion letters long consisting of G C T and A. Almost every cell in your body contains a full copy of […]