Craig Venter and team make a historic announcement: they've created the first fully functioning, reproducing cell controlled by synthetic DNA. He explains how they did it and why the achievement marks the beginning of a new era for science.
Genomics pioneer Craig Venter takes a break from his epic round-the-world expedition to talk about the millions of genes his team has discovered so far in its quest to map the ocean's biodiversity.
"Can we create new life out of our digital universe?" Craig Venter asks. His answer is "yes" -- and pretty soon. He walks through his latest research and promises that we'll soon be able to build and boot up a synthetic chromosome. NOTE: This talk was given in 2008, and this field of science has developed quickly since then. Read "Corrections &a...
In 2001, Craig Venter made headlines for sequencing the human genome. In 2003, he started mapping the ocean's biodiversity. And now he's created the first synthetic lifeforms -- microorganisms that can produce alternative fuels.
Over the past week, we’ve noticed a lot of TED-related news items in the ether. Here, some highlights:
J. Craig Venter (watch his talks on creating "synthetic life" and sampling the ocean’s DNA) has come up with what The New York Times describes as “a biological fax machine.” Huh? In brief, Venter wants to detect life on Mars, determine the...
Dan Gibson leads a new breed of bioengineers, called genome writers, who use DNA to design and build new products powering the next industrial revolution.
On the opening day of TED2016, we heard outrageous ideas from the TED Fellows and one stellar session of talks. Below, highlights for you following at home.
The encyclopedia of ... a single person. What does one human's DNA look like -- in printed form? When Riccardo Sabatini invites Craig Venter to appear onstage, he was wheeled onstag...
Aubrey de Grey, British researcher on aging, claims he has drawn a roadmap to defeat biological aging. He provocatively proposes that the first human beings who will live to 1,000 years old have already been born.
In this reel, TED recaps an amazing year of talks from three conferences, a bunch of smaller TED events -- and a powerful year of TEDx. Dive in, and then follow up with talks that intrigue you ... You'll see, in order of appearance: The LXD, Chris Anderson and Julian Assange, Bill Gates, Chip Conley, Naomi Klein, John Underkoffler...
While we’ve been preparing for next week’s TED conference in Vancouver, BC, some TEDsters have been busy Dancing with the Stars, protesting the NSA and musing on the aftermath of speaking at TED. Here are some illustrious activities from around the TED world this week:
Nilofer Merchant (watch her TED Talk) admits that she had hoped for fame a...
To celebrate 10 years of TED Talks, we went back through the archives to show you how fast biotechnology has changed over the past ten years, and some interesting moments along the way.
We start with some history in a talk by James Watson, who co-discovered the first models of DNA’s structure with his partner Francis Crick, as a 23-year-o...
Just a few of the intriguing headlines involving members of the TED community this week:
The bare necessities of life. In a paper published on March 25, Craig Venter revealed that he and his team have created a minimalist microbe containing only the genes essential for its survival. The ultimate goal is to create new synthetic life forms...
Written by the educators who created The Deep Ocean, a brief look at the key facts, tough questions and big ideas in their field. Begin this TED Study with a fascinating read that gives context and clarity to the material.
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.
Arthur C. Clarke
Planet Ocean
In the late 1960s,...
Tomorrow is a promising day: It’s full of possibility in a way yesterday isn’t, but so much more immediate than the nebulous future. TED2016 kicks off with a session called “Our Tomorrow,” a chance to hear from speakers with big ideas on where we’re headed, from a 10-year-old writer to a titan who creates much of the television you watch tod...
“This is a little different than the mainstage at TED, in a sense that this is a little more relaxed,” says our host, the poet and TED speaker Clint Smith. “These are speakers who have not been selected specifically for the mainstage, but they’re just as talented, just as brilliant, and just as important.”
A spectrum of ideas, stories, pe...
Secrets, disease and beauty are all written in the human genome, the complete set of genetic instructions needed to build a human being. Now, as scientist and entrepreneur Riccardo Sabatini shows us, we have the power to read this complex code, predicting things like height, eye color, age and even facial structure -- all from a vial of blood. A...
X Prize founder Peter Diamandis talks about how he helped Stephen Hawking fulfill his dream of going to space -- by flying together into the upper atmosphere and experiencing weightlessness at zero g.
Dean Ornish shares new research that shows how adopting healthy lifestyle habits can affect a person at a genetic level. For instance, he says, when you live healthier, eat better, exercise, and love more, your brain cells actually increase.
In 2007, Paul Rothemund gave TED a short summary of his specialty, DNA folding. Now he lays out in clear, abundant detail the immense promise of this field -- to create tiny machines that assemble themselves.
What is genomics? How will it affect our lives? In this intriguing primer on the genomics revolution, entrepreneur Barry Schuler says we can at least expect healthier, tastier food. He suggests we start with the pinot noir grape, to build better wines.
What do 24,000 ideas look like? Ecologist Eric Berlow and physicist Sean Gourley apply algorithms to the entire archive of TEDx Talks, taking us on a stimulating visual tour to show how ideas connect globally.
Chris Anderson, then the editor of Wired, explores the four key stages of any viable technology: setting the right price, gaining market share, displacing an established technology and, finally, becoming ubiquitous.
Biologist Dan Gibson edits and programs DNA, just like coders program a computer. But his "code" creates life, giving scientists the power to convert digital information into biological material like proteins and vaccines. Now he's on to a new project: "biological transportation," which holds the promise of beaming new medicines across the globe...
Louise Leakey asks, "Who are we?" The question takes her to the Rift Valley in Eastern Africa, where she digs for the evolutionary origins of humankind -- and suggests a stunning new vision of our competing ancestors.
Peter Diamandis says it's our moral imperative to keep exploring space -- and he talks about how, with the X Prize and other incentives, we're going to do just that.
We can evolve bacteria, plants and animals -- futurist Juan Enriquez asks: Is it ethical to evolve the human body? In a visionary talk that ranges from medieval prosthetics to present day neuroengineering and genetics, Enriquez sorts out the ethics associated with evolving humans and imagines the ways we'll have to transform our own bodies if we...
In this inspiring talk about recent developments in biomimicry, Janine Benyus provides heartening examples of ways in which nature is already influencing the products and systems we build.
Glowing dogs ... mice that grow human ears ... bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe describes an astonishing series of recent bio-engineering experiments, and asks: Isn't it time to set some ground rules?
Science writer Richard Preston talks about some of the most enormous living beings on the planet, the giant trees of the US Pacific Northwest. Growing from a tiny seed, they support vast ecosystems -- and are still, largely, a mystery.