About this episode

The episode features a discussion with molecular biologist Adrian Woolfson about his new book and the implications of synthetic biology on health and the environment.

Adrian is a molecular biologist and co-founder and CEO of Genyro, a synthetic biology company. He has published 2 previous books on life science (Life Without Genes and An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Genetics). In this conversation we discussed his new book, cover below and the title of this post. ABI. As Adrian puts it, a monumental shift, a second genesis, the “artivolution,” ability to use a molecular Gutenberg press, it’s post-Darwinian. I made an infographic about the book and our conversation with NotebookLM The expansion of genome sequences beyond “Fred’s library” (referring to Fred Sanger, father of genome sequencing, little green box) We talked about the jump from DNA reading to editing and now writing genomes, with the potential of the latter for both good and harm. I disagreed with Adrian about the bright prospects for curing diseases, but there are many possibilities for positive impact, such as intervening vs the climate crisis and sustainability. We also discussed the large language of life models (LLLMs) and by coincidence my colleagues and I just published a review of these in this Nature Biotechnology (←free access is hyperlinked). “It should be possible to…

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