The age of genetic wonder

So let me with start with Roy Amara.

So Roy's argument is that
most new technologies

tend to be overestimated
in their impact to begin with,

and then they get underestimated in
the long term because we get used to them.

These really are days
of miracle and wonder.

You remember that
wonderful song by Paul Simon?

There were two lines in it.

So what was it that was considered
miraculous back then?

Slowing down things, back then,
and the long distance call.

Because, of course, you used
to get interrupted by operators

who would tell you long distance calling,
do you want to hang up?

And now we think nothing of calling
all over the world.

Well, something similar may be happening

with reading and programming life.

But before I unpack that,

let's just talk about telescopes.

So telescopes were overestimated
originally in their impact.

This is one of Galileo's early models.

People thought it was just
going to ruin all religion.

(Laughter)

So we're not paying that much
attention to telescopes.

But of course telescopes
launched 10 years ago, as you just heard,

could take this Volkswagen,
fly it to the Moon,

and you could see the lights
on that Volkswagen light up on the Moon.

And that's the kind of resolution power
that allowed you to see

little specks of dust
floating around distant suns.

Imagine for a second that this
was a sun a billion light years away

and you had a little speck of dust
that came in front of it.

and that's what detecting
an exoplanet is like.

And the cool thing is the telescopes
that are now being launched

would allow you to see
a single candle lit on the Moon,

and if you separated it by one plate,

you could see two candles
separately at that distance.

And that's the kind
of resolution that you need

to begin that little speck of dust
as it comes around the sun

and see if it has a blue-green signature.

And if it does have
a blue-green signature,

it means that life is common
in the Universe.

The first time you ever
see a blue-green signature

on a distant planet,

it means there's photosynthesis there,

there's water there,

and the chances you saw
the only other planet

with photosynthesis are about zero.

And that's a calendar-changing event.

There's a before and after
we are alone in the Universe.

Forget about the discovery
of whatever continent.

So as you're thinking about this,
we're now beginning

to be able to image most of the Universe,

and that is a time of miracle and wonder.

And we kind of take that for granted.

Something similar is happening in life.

So we're hearing about life
in these little bits and pieces.

We hear about CRISPR
and we hear about this technology

and we hear about this technology,
but the bottom line on life

is that life turns out to be a code.

And life as code is
a really important concept

because it means,

just in the same way
as you can write a sentence

in English or in French or Chinese,

just in the same way
as you can copy a sentence,

just in the same way
as you can edit a sentence,

just in the same way
as you can print a sentence,

you're beginning to be able
to do that with life.

It means that we're beginning
to learn how to read this language.

And this, of course, is the language
that is used by this orange.

So how does this orange execute code?

It doesn't do it in ones and zeroes
like a computer does.

It sits on a tree and one day it does,

plop,

and that means, execute.

AACTAAG. Make me a little root.

TCGACC. Make me a little stem.

GAC. Make me some leaves.
AGC. Make me some flowers.

And then GCAA. Make me some more oranges.

If I edit a sentence in English

on a word processor,

then what happens is you can go
from this word to that word.

If I edit something in this orange

and put in GCAAC,

using CRISPR or something else
that you've heard of,

then this orange becomes a lemon

or it becomes a grapefruit
or it becomes a tangerine.

And if I edit one in a thousand letters,

you become the person
sitting next to you today.

Be more careful where you sit.

(Laughter)

What's happening on this stuff
is it was really expensive to begin with.

It was like long distance calls.

But the cost of this is dropping
50 percent faster than Moore's Law.

The first $200 full genome
was announced yesterday by Veritas.

And so as you're looking at these systems,

it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter,
it doesn't matter, and then it does.

So let me just give you
the map view of this stuff.

This is a big discovery.

There's 23 chromosomes. Cool.

Let's now start using a telescope version,
but instead of using a telescope,

let's use a microscope to zoom in

on the interior of those chromosomes,

which is the Y chromosome.

It's a third the size of the X.
It's recessive and mutant.

But hey, just a male.

And as you're looking at this stuff,

here's kind of a country view

at a 400 base pair resolution level,

and then you zoom in to 550
and then you zoom in to 850

and you can begin to identify
more and more genes as you zoom in.

And then you zoom in to the state level

and you can begin to tell
who's got leukemia,

how did they get leukemia,
what kind of leukemia do they have,

what shifted from
what place to what place?

And then you zoom in
to the Google street view level.

So this is what happens
if you have colorectal cancer

for a very specific patient
on the letter-by-letter resolution.

So what we're doing in this stuff
is we're gathering information

and just generating
enormous amounts of information.

This is one of the largest
databases on the planet,

and it's growing faster than we
can build computers to store it.

You can create some incredible
maps with this stuff.

you want to understand the plague

and why one plague is bubonic

and the other one
is a different kind of plague

and the other one
is a different kind of plague?

Well, here's a map of the plague.

Some are absolutely deadly to humans.

Some are not.

And oh, by the way,
as you go to the bottom of this,

how does it compare to tuberculosis?

So this is the difference between
tuberculosis and various kinds of plagues,

and you can play detective
with this stuff,

because you can take
a very specific kind of cholera

that affected Haiti

and you can look at
which country it came from,

which region it came from,

and probably which soldier took that
from that African country to Haiti.

Zoom out.

It's not just zooming in.

This is one of the coolest maps
ever done by human beings.

So what they've done is they've taken
all the genetic information they have

about all the species,

and they've put a tree of life
on a single page

that you can zoom in and out of.

So this is what came first,
how did it diversify, how did it branch,

how large is that genome,
on a single page.

It's kind of the universe
of life on Earth,

and it's being constantly
updated and completed.

And so as you're looking at this stuff,

the really important changes,
the old biology used to be reactive.

You used to have a lot of biologists
that had microscopes

and they had magnifying glasses
and they were out observing animals.

The new biology is proactive.

You don't just observe stuff,
you make stuff.

And that's a really big change,

because it allows us
to do things like this.

And I know you're really
excited by this picture.

It only two us four years
and 40 million dollars

to be able to take this picture.

(Laughter)

And what we did

is we took the full
gene code out of a cell,

not a gene, not two genes,
the full gene code out of a cell,

built a completely new gene code,

inserted it into the cell,

figured out how a way
to have the cell execute that code,

and built a completely new species.

So this is the world's
first synthetic life form.

And so what do you do with this stuff?

Well, this stuff is going
to change the world.

Let me give you three short-term trends

in terms of how it's going
to change the world.