Craig Venter Ponders "What Is Life?"

 Genomics

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.

O ne 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.

Synthetic 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.

At around the hour mark in the video, Venter looks ahead to the next 70 years:

Look at the tremendous progress in the 70 years since Schrodinger's lecture on this campus. Try to imagine 70 years from now in the year 2082 what will be happening. With the success of private space flight, the moon and Mars will be clearly colonized. New life forms for food or energy production or for new medicines will be sent as digital information to be converted back into life forms in the 4.3 to 21 minutes that it takes for a digital wave to go from earth to Mars.

I suggested in place of sending living humans to distant galaxies that we can send digital information together with the means to boot it up in tiny space vessels. More importantly and as I will speak to on Saturday evening synthetic life will enable us to understand all life on this planet and to enable new industries to produce food, energy, water and medicine as we add 1 billion new humans to earth every 12 years.

Schrodinger's "What is Life?" helped to stimulate Jim Watson and Francis Crick to help kick off this new era of DNA science. One can only hope that the newest frontier of synthetic life will have a similar impact on the future.

—For a transcript of the entire Venter talk, http://www.edge.org/conversation/what-is-life

SOURCE  Trinity College Dublin

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