Engineering Synthetic Life With Craig Venter (#385)

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Science, Physics, Natural Sciences

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 11 January 2024

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Get 30% off unlimited access to Ground News, giving you full coverage of breaking news and allowing you to navigate media bias seamlessly 👉 https://www.ground.news/drbrian It may sound like science fiction, but it's true. Biologists are already creating synthetic life from scratch. Of course, this raises many questions: what is life? What are the possible applications? And are we on to something here, or are we just playing God? Here today, to answer all of these questions and more is one of the most influential biologists in the world, Craig Venter! Craig Venter is a world-renowned biotechnologist known for his groundbreaking contributions to genomics. He had a pivotal role in leading the first draft sequence of the human genome and assembling the pioneering team that achieved the transfection of a cell with a synthetic chromosome. Later in his life, he and his research team created the world’s first synthetic organism from scratch, demonstrating the potential of synthetic biology to engineer life at the molecular level. In our lively interview, we dive deep into the world of synthetic biology, biological warfare, and engineering synthetic life. Tune in! Key Takeaways: 00:00:00 Intro 00:01:36 What is life? 00:08:03 Mapping the human genome 00:21:03 DNA durability and extraterrestrial life 00:26:49 The dangers of synthetic biology 00:34:27 The next frontier for synthetic biology 00:46:47 The race to sequence the human genome 01:06:15 The Voyage of Sorcerer II — Additional resources: 📢 Ownership of your health starts with AG1. Try AG1 and get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3K2 and 5 FREE AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase 👉 https://drinkag1.com/impossible ➡️ Check out Craig’s institute: https://www.jcvi.org/ ➡️ Follow me on your favorite platforms: ✖️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔔 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Join my mailing list: https://briankeating.com/mailing_list ✍️ Check out my blog: https://briankeating.com/blog.php 🎙️ Follow my podcast: https://briankeating.com/podcast — Into the Impossible with Brian Keating is a podcast dedicated to all those who want to explore the universe within and beyond the known. Make sure to follow so you never miss an episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today we're featuring Craig Venter, a world-renowned biotechnologist known for his groundbreaking contributions to genomics.
0:05.8	He had a pivotal role in leading the first draft sequence of the human genome and assembling the pioneering team that achieved the transfection of a cell with a synthetic
0:15.1	chromosome. Later in life, he and his research team created the world's first synthetic organism
0:21.1	from scratch, demonstrating the potential of synthetic biology to engineer life at the molecular level.
0:26.6	Craig's a leading figure. He's hilarious, unfettered, unshackled, and unafraid. You'll hear all of that in this episode and find out why he was among
0:35.2	time magazines 100 most influential people in the world. Not once but twice, maybe on another planet where life already exists.
0:43.3	So without further we do, we welcome a lively episode
0:46.1	of the Into the Impossible Podcast,
0:47.6	my friend Craigventor, live recorded at UCSD
0:51.4	this past fall. technology is indistinguishable from magic.
1:05.0	Open the pod bay doors now.
1:07.0	Welcome everybody to what promises to be an exciting and lively emphasis on lively episode of the Into the
1:14.2	Impossible podcast with none other than Craigventor of many different
1:18.6	fames but we're going to talk about a couple of them in particular including
1:21.8	mapping the human genome Craig is local here in
1:24.4	La Jolla. He has his institute named after him down the road from our campus and he's
1:29.6	graciously agreed to spend some time with me. I'm going to run out of time before I run out of questions.
1:34.2	Craig, thank you so much for visiting.
1:35.6	My pleasure to be here. And you're a proud alumni, son of San Diego, UCSD, and we're going to talk a little bit
1:42.3	about how the campus has changed a little bit.
1:44.8	But sitting in that chair a couple of months back was Kim Stanley Robinson, who also goes by his
1:48.8	middle name only as Stan.
	...

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