Frances Arnold

We've been tinkering with nature for tens of thousands of years - look at a poodle! So we've created all sorts of organisms and biological things that wouldn't be here were it not for us. ”

My feeling is that if a human being can coax life to build bonds between silicon and carbon, nature can do it too. ”

Nature is solving all sorts of problems that we throw at her - how to degrade plastic bottles, how to degrade pesticides and herbicides and antibiotics. She creates new enzymes in response to that all the time, in real time. ”

To survive and even thrive in a changing world, nature offers another great lesson: the survivors are those who at the least adapt to change, or even better learn to benefit from change and grow intellectually and personally. That means careful listening and constant learning. ”

I see a future in which nature gives us a helping hand. Instead of destroying the natural world, why can't we use it to solve the kinds of problems that we are facing? ”

The real frontier is making these hybrid systems where you expand the capabilities of biology with chemistry. ”

I'm an engineer by training. ”

Human beings have been manipulating the biological world for thousands of years without understanding how DNA codes function. ”

I wanted to make enzymes that would solve human problems, not just problems for a cell that makes them. ”

I get called lots of things - a biochemist, a molecular biologist, a chemical engineer - and I guess I am all of those. I identify most as human! ”