Isobutanol is not a natural product, but we evolved an enzyme that makes it possible to convert plant sugars to this precursor to jet fuel.
Mother Nature has been the best bioengineer in history. Why not harness the evolutionary process to design proteins?
When I started engineering proteins I didn't know how hard it would be.
Proteins aren't designed, they're evolved.
Inside of a living cell there are thousands of proteins that enable it to make more of itself and make your malaria drug, for instance. We don't understand those. We don't understand how they work together.
I've been called pushy and aggressive and all the negative words that are rarely applied to men with the same traits. But it doesn't bother me.
Science and technology are going to be the basis for many of the solutions to social problems.
I know how to do science. I know how to make things. I don't know how to run a company. Now that's a really tough job.
Pittsburgh was a wonderful place to grow up - diverse and complex, one could go from one culture to a completely different one in just a few blocks. It was a whole world in one city.
In the test tube, I can make any DNA I want, recombining it from monkeys, worms, anywhere. So I can explore new rules of breeding with molecules.