06 March 2008

On the verge of creating synthetic life: Craig Venter on TED.com

"Can we create new life out of our digital universe?" asks Craig Venter. And his answer is, yes, and pretty soon. He walks the TED2008 audience through his latest research into "fourth-generation fuels" -- biologically created fuels with CO2 as their feedstock. His talk covers the details of creating brand-new chromosomes using digital technology, the reasons why we would want to do this, and the bioethics of synthetic life. A fascinating Q&A with TED's Chris Anderson follows (two words: suicide genes). (Recorded March 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 32:52.)

Watch Craig Venter's talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.

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Technorati tags: Chris Anderson (TED), Craig Venter

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Naveen Sethia – March 9 2008

Thanks for putting up this wonderful talk.
Jim Stolze – March 9 2008

Thanks for putting this up so quick after the conference!

I blogged about this talk in dutch:
read the post.
suzi finer – March 7 2008

Fascinating stuff here...adding the link now.
Emily McManus – March 7 2008

@Rich -- thanks! Link is fixed.
Rich J – March 7 2008

You link to the wrong video! That's a link to Alan Kay.

The real link is here:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/227