This TED Talk features computational biologist Sarah Jane Dunn, recorded live at TED Summit 2019.

The second half of the last century was completely defined by a technological revolution, the software revolution.

The ability to program electrons on a material called silicon

made possible technologies, companies and industries

that were at one point unimaginable to many of us,

but which have now fundamentally changed the way the world works.

The first half of this century, though,

is going to be transformed by a new software revolution,

the living software revolution.

And this will be powered by the ability

to program biochemistry

on a material called biology.

And doing so will enable us to harness

the properties of biology to generate new kinds of therapies,

to repair damaged tissue, to reprogram faulty cells, or even build programmable operating systems

out of biochemistry. If we can realize this, and we do need to realize it, its impact will be so enormous that it will make

the first software revolution pale in comparison, and that's because living software would transform

the entirety of medicine, agriculture, and energy, and these are sectors that dwarf those dominated by IT.

Imagine programmable plants that fix nitrogen more effectively

or resist emerging fungal pathogens,

or even programming crops to be perennial rather than annual,

so you could double your crop yields each year.

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