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The problem with existing biology is you change only one or two genes at a time.

Even if we never cure a single disease, the Human Genome Project and other ventures will have been worth it.

We found out that, contrary to what many people thought, in the immune system, genes can change during the life cycle of the individual.

If genetic research doesn't seemed to have lived up to its therapeutic promise, it's because sequencing is just too slow and expensive.

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.

And of course, identifying all human genes and proteins will have great medical significance.

The idea would be in my mind - and I know it sounds strange - is that the most important advances in medicine would be made not by new knowledge in molecular biology, because that's exceeding what we can even use. It'll be made by mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, figuring out a way to get all that information together.

Realizing the ways in which we humans may have been inadvertently changing our genes for millennia provides a way for us to begin to think about the inevitable genetic revolution in medicine that is going to allow us to advertently change our genes over centuries and even decades.

Right now people are interested in genetic engineering to help the human race. That's a noble cause, and that's where we should be heading. But once we get past that - once we understand what genetic diseases we can deal with - when we start thinking about the future, there's an opportunity to create some new life-forms.