Intellectual property is a key aspect for economic development.

We need 10,000 genomes, not 100, to start to understand the link between genetics, disease and wellness.

The only 'afterlife' is what other people remember of you.

I have an unusual type of thinking. I have no visual memory whatsoever. Everything is conceptual to me.

Genome design is going to be a key part of the future. That's why we need fast, cheap, accurate DNA synthesis, so you can make a lot of iterations of something and test them.

How we understand our own selves and how we work with our DNA software has implications that will affect everything from vaccine development to new approaches to antibiotics, new sources of food, new sources of chemicals, even potentially new sources of energy.

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.

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

I thought we'd just sequence the genome once and that would be sufficient for most things in people's lifetimes. Now we're seeing how changeable and adaptable it is, which is why we're surviving and evolving as a species.