De Extinction and the Future of Gene Editing
Matt Ridley
Ten years ago, I invited a bunch of clever biologists to my home to discuss the possibility of one day reversing the extinction of a bird called the Great Auk. We did not claim it could yet be done but we knew that the two technologies for doing de-extinction – ancient genome sequencing and Crispr […]
Life science is taking off in the age of the gene
Matt Ridley
The ‘great stagnation’ is a myth; wonders are being accomplished. But silly rules still block progress. My article for the Telegraph: Back in the early 1950s scientists were baffled by one aspect of life itself. Our cells were full of proteins whose properties depended on their precise shapes, and the key feature of life was […]
Evolution ain’t what it used to be
Matt Ridley
Novel rare genes and shrinking brains My latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal. If you write about genetics and evolution, one of the commonest questions you are likely to be asked at public events is whether human evolution has stopped. It is a surprisingly hard question to answer. I’m tempted to […]
