full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Christina Agapakis: What happens when biology becomes technology?

Unscramble the Blue Letters


I found this specimen in the Harvard University hrrueibam, where it's housed with five million other sncempeis from all over the world. I wanted to take a piece of science's past, tied up as it was with colonialism, and all of the embedded ideas of the way that nature and science and society should work together, and ask qnsutieos about science's future.

Working with an awesome team at Ginkgo, and others at UC Santa Cruz, we were able to extract a little bit of the DNA from a tiny sliver of this plant scempien and to sequence the DNA inside. And then resynthesize a possible version of the genes that made the smell of the plant. By inserting those genes into yeast, we could pudcroe little bits of that smell and be able to, maybe, smell a little bit of something that's lost forever. Working again with Daisy and Sissel Tolaas, my collaborator on the cheese porject, we reconstructed and composed a new selml of that fwoelr, and created an installation where ppolee could eeeixpcnre it, to be part of this natural history and synthetic future.

Open Cloze


I found this specimen in the Harvard University _________, where it's housed with five million other _________ from all over the world. I wanted to take a piece of science's past, tied up as it was with colonialism, and all of the embedded ideas of the way that nature and science and society should work together, and ask _________ about science's future.

Working with an awesome team at Ginkgo, and others at UC Santa Cruz, we were able to extract a little bit of the DNA from a tiny sliver of this plant ________ and to sequence the DNA inside. And then resynthesize a possible version of the genes that made the smell of the plant. By inserting those genes into yeast, we could _______ little bits of that smell and be able to, maybe, smell a little bit of something that's lost forever. Working again with Daisy and Sissel Tolaas, my collaborator on the cheese _______, we reconstructed and composed a new _____ of that ______, and created an installation where ______ could __________ it, to be part of this natural history and synthetic future.

Solution


  1. questions
  2. people
  3. smell
  4. specimen
  5. herbarium
  6. produce
  7. specimens
  8. experience
  9. project
  10. flower

Original Text


I found this specimen in the Harvard University Herbarium, where it's housed with five million other specimens from all over the world. I wanted to take a piece of science's past, tied up as it was with colonialism, and all of the embedded ideas of the way that nature and science and society should work together, and ask questions about science's future.

Working with an awesome team at Ginkgo, and others at UC Santa Cruz, we were able to extract a little bit of the DNA from a tiny sliver of this plant specimen and to sequence the DNA inside. And then resynthesize a possible version of the genes that made the smell of the plant. By inserting those genes into yeast, we could produce little bits of that smell and be able to, maybe, smell a little bit of something that's lost forever. Working again with Daisy and Sissel Tolaas, my collaborator on the cheese project, we reconstructed and composed a new smell of that flower, and created an installation where people could experience it, to be part of this natural history and synthetic future.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
genetic engineering 8
synthetic biologists 3
poop changed 2
ten years 2
cambridge team 2
poke holes 2
synthetic biology 2


Important Words


  1. awesome
  2. bit
  3. bits
  4. cheese
  5. collaborator
  6. colonialism
  7. composed
  8. created
  9. cruz
  10. daisy
  11. dna
  12. embedded
  13. experience
  14. extract
  15. flower
  16. future
  17. genes
  18. ginkgo
  19. harvard
  20. herbarium
  21. history
  22. housed
  23. ideas
  24. inserting
  25. installation
  26. lost
  27. million
  28. natural
  29. nature
  30. part
  31. people
  32. piece
  33. plant
  34. produce
  35. project
  36. questions
  37. reconstructed
  38. resynthesize
  39. santa
  40. science
  41. sequence
  42. sissel
  43. sliver
  44. smell
  45. society
  46. specimen
  47. specimens
  48. synthetic
  49. team
  50. tied
  51. tiny
  52. tolaas
  53. uc
  54. university
  55. version
  56. wanted
  57. work
  58. working
  59. world
  60. yeast