. - [kondwani] i wanna know what breakthroughs are being made. - technologies like crispr are incredibly powerful. - what we're doing here is really the beginning of a true revolution. - that will force the future too. that is incredible. live genetic engineering. (eerie staccato music) (dramatic electronic music) (prosthetic clicking) (water speckles) (robotic arm whirring) (electronic tone beeping) my name is kondwani phiri. i'm a genetic researcher. you could say, it's in my blood. from an early age of about eight or nine or so, i had just a natural curiosity for the natural world. cancer runs in my family. in fact, i lost my aunt to breast cancer. and that peaked my interests in genetics. i'm fascinated by how the genes we inherit shape our biological destiny, including our health. i believe the key to treatments and cures for diseases like these, lies in explicit efforts to engineer human genes. but can we fix not only what's broken but also enhance our genetic codes and improve on mother nature? some day, will humans direct their own evolution and should we? (dramatic staccato musi

(electronic tone beeping) my name is kondwani phiri. i'm a genetic researcher. you could say, it's in my blood. from an early age of about eight or nine or so, i had just a natural curiosity for the natural world. cancer runs in my family. in fact, i lost my aunt to breast cancer. and that peaked my interests in genetics. i'm fascinated by how the genes we inherit shape our biological destiny, including our health. i believe the key to treatments and cures for diseases like these, lies in explicit efforts to engineer human genes. but can we fix not only what's broken but also enhance our genetic codes and improve on mother nature? the unique sequence of these base pairs are instructions for the body to make proteins. the base pairs are like musical notes on a score that tell a musician how to play a song. when all the different sections of the dna are played, the result is a biological symphony. (upbeat orchestral music) but like the musical note played out of key that compromises the entire performance, there is an error in one of annabel's genes. (annabel groa

(staccato electronic music) - [kondwani] speaking with george church, firsthand, is both humbling and inspiring. as if resurrecting the dna of the wooly mammoth wasn't enough, he also helped start a $ billion human genome project. this landmark study identified every base pair of dna and mapped the entire human genome. its primary purpe was to conquer disease. it was and remains a really big deal. (audience applauding) - we are here to celebrate the completion of the first survey of the entire human genome. - [kondwani] this roadmap of the intricate genetic codes ross theuman body empers docts better agnose and eat disee. - we've worked really hard on bringing down the cost of reading genomes, which i think is the thing that mt people could benefit from. - [kondwani] thanks to advances in dna sequencing technology, the cost of reading entire genomes has plummeted. - all it would take is a small tipping point event to shift it over so that everyby's using this. and in the case of genetics, that would be reading everybody's genome and giving them information that was actionable. - [kond