NEW YORK — As scientists aiming to create genomes from scratch see it, nature had her chance — 3.8 billion years, to be precise, the length of time that life on Earth has been evolving and, supposedly, getting more finely adapted and more complex. Now it’s the turn of scientists, who think they can do better.
Halfway through a two-day meeting of “Genome Project-write” at the New York Genome Center in New York City, more than 250 attendees from 10 countries had unveiled dozens of ways that designing and building genomes might make possible a dazzling litany of futuristic advances.