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As we all saw in grade school, once you learn how to read a book, somebody is going to want to write one - that's how authors are made. Once we know how to read our own genetic code, someone is going to want to rewrite that 'text,' tinker with traits - play God, some would say.

Our own genomes carry the story of evolution, written in DNA, the language of molecular genetics, and the narrative is unmistakable.

Trying to read our DNA is like trying to understand software code - with only 90% of the code riddled with errors. It's very difficult in that case to understand and predict what that software code is going to do.

You can't have life without the genetic code.

We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before.

Now that we can read and write the genetic code, put it in digital form and translate it back into synthesized life, it will be possible to speed up biological evolution to the pace of social evolution.

Genes are like the story, and DNA is the language that the story is written in.

I'm fascinated by the idea that genetics is digital. A gene is a long sequence of coded letters, like computer information. Modern biology is becoming very much a branch of information technology.

I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about genetic information and what you can and cannot learn.

As human beings, we are the genetic elite, the sentient, contemplating and innovating sum of countless genetic accidents and transcription errors.