Synthetic biology is the technique that enables us not just to read and edit but also write DNA to program living biological structures as though they were tiny computers. Unlike cloning Dolly the sheep-which cut and copied existing genetic material-the future of synthetic biology might be something like an app store, where you could download and add new capabilities into any cell, microbe, plant, or animal. This breakthrough science has the potential to mitigate, perhaps solve, humanity's immediate and longer-term existential challenges: climate change; the feeding, clothing, housing, and caring for billions of humans; fighting the next viral outbreak before it becomes a global pandemic; old age as a treatable pathology; bringing back extinct animals. It could also be anarchic and socially destructive. With our governing structures created in an era before startling advances in technology, we are not prepared for a future in which life could be manipulated or programmed. As futurist Amy Webb and synthetic biologist Andrew Hessel show in this book, within the next decade, we will need to make important decisions: whether to program novel viruses to fight diseases, what genetic privacy will look like, who will "own" living organisms, how companies should earn revenue from engineered cells, and how to contain a synthetic organism in a lab. The Genesis Machine? provides the background for us to understand and grapple with these issues, and think through the religious, philosophical, and ethical implications for the future.

Named one of The New Yorker's BEST BOOKS OF 2022 SO FAR The next frontier in technology is inside our own bodies. Synthetic biology will revolutionize how we define family, how we identify disease and treat aging, where we make our homes, and how we nourish ourselves. This fast-growing field--which uses computers to modify or rewrite genetic code--has created revolutionary, groundbreaking solutions such as the mRNA COVID vaccines, IVF, and lab-grown hamburger that tastes like the real thing. It gives us options to deal with existential threats: climate change, food insecurity, and access to fuel. But there are significant risks. Who should decide how to engineer living organisms? Whether engineered organisms should be planted, farmed, and released into the wild? Should there be limits to human enhancements? What cyber-biological risks are looming? Could a future biological war, using engineered organisms, cause a mass extinction event? Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel's riveting examination of synthetic biology and the bioeconomy provide the background for thinking through the upcoming risks and moral dilemmas posed by redesigning life, as well as the vast opportunities waiting for us on the horizon.

Here's to great dogs. Many of us would like to believe there's a special place in doggie heaven for the really great ones. I know I want to. No question they've earned it, deserve it, and it seems only fair. I know there are a great many great dogs out there, working their magic, living their lives with their families and saying it all without ever saying a word. For dog lovers, our precious memories of those "non-conversations" with dearly-departed four-legged friends lend silence a deafening quality. I explained to a friend that Paw Prints is a book about great dogs, not just my dog, although Mac was truly some great dog. And as I've said many times, he was certainly the dog of my life, and his friendship enriched and changed not just my life, but the lives of everyone in our family. While the book is my attempt to capture Mac's remarkably and improbably wonderful story before it fades to past, it's also in many ways my story, too. Because Mackie and I were happily and deliriously, joined-at-the-paw. Amazing, I think, that I could learn so much from a guy that never said a word. Paw Prints in My Heart is Mac's story. I think of it as my gift to our family and all of his friends, two and four-legged, that had the pleasure and the privilege of knowing and being loved by this magnificent old Labrador retriever. It's my best attempt to capture and chronicle a remarkable life, the pain and sadness of his passing, but most of all, his joyful impact upon us over what truly was a most improbable life of fourteen years and a day. A reverent and grateful tribute to a gentle and pure spirit that for me will always be a living reminder of a loving friend in the very truest sense. In every way, for me this book was a labor of love and joy to write. Parts will make you laugh, and others may bring you to tears, so a tissue at times may be advised. But I have the highest hopes that you'll read it, enjoy it, and connect in ways that only you can understand. Maybe even share it with friends that might understand and pass it along, as a comfort for a true friend they've lost, and for what they've experienced, and a way for them to remember the laughter and happy times through their tears. I hope that dog lovers everywhere read this book and see a bit of their dog in Mac. I hope that the non-dog lovers amongst us read this book and reconsider. I hope that everyone has at least one dog of their life in their life. My first novel Rush to Dawn, was, in many ways a love letter to my wife, Lynne. This book, I'd like to believe, is a love letter from Mac to all of us.