Craig Venter. Wikimedia Commons, Margoz Craig Venter, the geneticist who made headlines in 2010 when he and colleagues created the first self-replicating cell with a synthetic genome, is on to his next big idea: a 3D printer for DNA, which could one day allow people to download, print, and inject vaccines at home.
Speaking at the inaugural Wired Health Conference in New York City this week (October 16), Venter said that his team of scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, are already testing a version of his digital biological converter—designed for what Venter calls “biological teleportation”—according to a report in Wired Science.
“Imagine being able to download a vaccine or your medicine on your computer at home," Venter said a week earlier (October 8) at The Atlantic Meets the Pacific forum in La Jolla, California, as reported in The Atlantic. "That's the not-to-distant future, and it wipes out the possibility of an epidemic."
The idea came from Venter’s experiences working with the Mayor of Mexico City during the H1N1 outbreak in 2009. Efforts to ...
