'What is Life? A 21st Century Perspective' by Dr Craig Venter

One of the landmark events of 20th century science was celebrated and reinterpreted for the 21st century in Trinity College Dublin on 12 July 2012 as part of the Science in the City programme of ESOF2012. Dr Craig Venter, one of the leaders of the Human Genome Project in the 1990s and a pioneer of synthetic biology delivered a lecture entitled, 'What is Life? A 21st century perspective' recreating the Irish event that inspired the discovery of the structure of DNA.
In February, 1943 one of the most distinguished scientists of the 20th Century, Erwin Schrödinger, delivered a seminal lecture, entitled 'What is Life?', under the auspices of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, in Trinity College Dublin. The lecture presented far-sighted ideas on how hereditary information could be encoded in a chemical structure (aperiodic crystal) in living cells. Schrödinger's book (1944) of the same title is considered to be a scientific classic. The book was cited by Crick and Watson as one of the inspirations which ultimately led them to unravel the structure of DNA in 1953, a breakthrough which won them the Nobel prize.

[@randyrobinson2609]

Genes are amazing and synthetic genes have both positive and other potentials. A cannot believe the complexity of what Venter is describing and what they are attempting to do. I think we aught to be in awe of LIFE and its capacity to create other life. Fascinating!

[@mjw12345]

Many thanks Michelle for the link!

[@dongangster86]

Good talk about how DNA works n it's functioning

[@EDUARDO12348]

I learned about this talk in Dr. Venter's book "Life at the speed of light" Also its fascinating to think that one day we might be able to translate valuable protein coding information over the internet so millions of people. This would revolutionize the way medicine and nutrition is delivered. Then perhaps in about 1000 years, future human species will be able to ride the light and transfer their genetic information into other planets to be synthesized anew.

[@AnimeshSharma1977]

"What i can not create, i do not understand" - Feynman

[@FearlessCitizen]

Venter @ 14:21

[@SurfaceEsthetics]

you can see them / and read the transcript / on edge org ...conversation/what-is-life

[@ThinkingBetter]

I'm sitting here trying to boot my miniature Golden Retriever DNA. I believe my sequencing data was OK and checked against several sequenced data; and I only fixed the growth issue to keep adult size small and implemented a minor modification for blue eyes based on comparison with human DNA, but none of the cell samples boot up. Damn hard to debug this thing. Any ideas?

[@DrayModeAPB]

This is just a small step before eventually being able to form our own sequences of DNA which create life forms with properties non-existent in the current world. for example a dog with horns as crazy and useless as that sounds, it's just a possible example.

[@nobonespurs]

not very good speaker, not much original thought, shotgun was main idea he pushed that gave him fame.