An excerpt from Alison Beard’s Harvard Business Review interview with biologist Craig Venter, who wants to engineer designer bugs to cure all our ills:

“Question:

Genomics was supposed to revolutionize the drug and health care industries, and you said it’s just beginning to do that. What industries do you expect to revolutionize with synthetic biology?

Craig Venter:

At Synthetic Genomics, we’re chemically writing the DNA for entire chromosomes to design cells, and it’s hard to envision a field that won’t be impacted in some way. We just announced a deal to produce large amounts of omega-3s from algae cells to create a healthy supplement. We’re trying to design cells that produce the chemical that is the basis of plastic bottles; it currently comes only from oil. We’re designing new vaccines: The U.S. government now has stockpiles of the first synthetic vaccine against H7N9 that we made with Novartis, so we’re ahead of a potential pandemic strain. Synthetic biology is going to affect medicine, chemicals, food.

Question:

People associate you with ‘commercializing’ science.

Craig Venter:

You know, before World War II, it was primarily private industry and philanthropy that funded science. Afterward, we went into this golden age of massive funding from the U.S. government, but now, percentage-wise, we’re in a dismal period of funding, and policies are limiting creativity. So business is the way to drive science forward, and people are finding there’s no difference in the goals or outcomes, because for science to impact society, it has to be economically viable: The medicines have to work and be widely available. Private investment is a way for breakthroughs to keep happening when the government is letting us down.”