“I'm hoping that these next 20 years will show what we did 20 years ago in sequencing the first human genome, was the beginning of the health revolution that will have more positive impact in people's lives than any other health event in history.”

“I think future engineered species could be the source of food, hopefully a source of energy, environmental remediation and perhaps replacing the petrochemical industry.”

“The environment has fallen to the wayside in politics.”

“Life is a DNA software system.”

“I think I'm a survivor. I could have suffered at least 100 professional deaths. I could come up with a list of the 100 times I've come closest to death, from having pneumonia as a child to car crashes.”

“Creating life at the speed of light is part of a new industrial revolution. Manufacturing will shift from centralised factories to a distributed, domestic manufacturing future, thanks to the rise of 3D printer technology.”

“Sometime in the future, I am a hundred percent certain scientists will sit down at a computer terminal, design what they want the organism to do, and build it.”

“As the Industrial Age is drawing to a close, I think that we're witnessing the dawn of the era of biological design.”

“Agriculture as we know it needs to disappear. We can design better and healthier proteins than we get from nature.”

“Genetic design is something we can use to fight the lack of sustainability we humans are forcing on the earth's environment.”

“In a biological system, the software builds its own hardware, but design is critical, and if you start with digital information, it has to be really accurate.”