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In 1971, a microbiologist named Ananda Chakrabarty patented a bacteria genetically engineered to degrade and destroy crude oil. The next year scientists created the first synthesized gene, a bit of yeast RNA ushered into existence virtually from scratch. These discoveries, among others, raised the curtain on the science of biotechnology. Forty years later, in 2010, biologist Craig Venter, already known as a key figure behind the mapping of the human genome, announced his creation of a microbe that earned the name Synthia: “the first self-replicating species on the planet whose parent was a computer.” Between Chakrabarty’s oil-eating microbe and the birth of Venter’s Synthia, a wave of gene therapies, pharmaceuticals, genetically engineered crops, and manufactured biofuels have transformed science, medicine, industry, and quite possibly, global ecology.
In the second decade of the twenty-first century, genetically engineered crops account for 88 percent of the corn, 93 percent of the soy, and 94 percent of the cotton, grown in the US (by acreage). In 2011, the first commercial flight powered by algae took off from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. During the recent United...
In the second decade of the twenty-first century, genetically engineered crops account for 88 percent of the corn, 93 percent of the soy, and 94 percent of the cotton, grown in the US (by acreage). In 2011, the first commercial flight powered by algae took off from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. During the recent United...