“What is life?” asks Craig Venter, the man who first mapped the human genome and created the first cell with a synthetic genome.
“Just 3 letters are enough to compose a universe of questions still unanswered. What separates the animate from the inanimate? What are the basic ingredients of life? Who lit the first spark? How the first organism? How extensive is life in the universe? If other types of creatures exist on other planets, are they as intelligent as us or more?”
Only three letters: D, N and A.
A code that according to many famous geneticists (such as Motoo Kimura) has increased by the equivalent of 100 million bits in the last 500 million years. DNA dominates all biological sciences, al point that all biology will become science of information. Taxonomists already use DNA-based 'barcodes' to distinguish one species from another. Other research groups are using DNA to store and transmit data, and many more efforts will be put into trying to read and write this incredible “code of life”. To play it. Simulate it. Even rewrite it to form new organisms.
"The life it is ultimately inhabited by DNA-driven biological machines. All living cells run on this 'operating system' which directs hundreds of thousands of robots called proteins. We will design and redesign organisms: given the digital character of information, we will be able to 'teleport' this data everywhere in real time, to remotely assemble proteins, viruses, living cells, just as we do today when the image or the voice are reproduced at a distance."
After having sequenced DNA, humanity is moving towards a new phase of evolution based on 'biological design'.
