Team Venter making history

biomimicry, by jude buffum

In this future — whose underpinnings, as Drs. Church and Venter demonstrated, are here already— life as we know it is transformed not by the error catastrophe of radiation damage to our genetic processes, but by the far greater upheaval caused by discovering how to read genetic sequences directly into computers, where the code can be replicated exactly, manipulated freely, and translated back into living organisms by writing the other way. "We can program these cells as if they were an extension of the computer," George Church announced, and proceeded to explain just how much progress has already been made.

From George Dyson's introduction to A short course on synthetic genomics [July, 2009, Edge Masterclass], presented by Craig Venter and George Church. Videos [mostly difficult for me to understand on one watch] and a pdf from an earlier, related event, at the link

Richard Dawkins interviews Venter [2008, BBC], touring his lab. Much easier.