"One of the ways that we knew that what we had was a synthetic cell was by watermarking the DNA so we could always tell our synthetic species from any naturally occurring one. We built in the names of the 46 scientists that contributed to the effort, and also there was a message with an URL. Of the three quotes, probably the most important one is James Joyce, "To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life." The second is from Oppenheimer's biography, American Prometheus: "See things not as they are, but as they might be." The third, from Richard Feynman, "What I cannot build, I cannot understand." Then we started getting e-mail from a Caltech scientist saying we misquoted Richard Feynman. To prove his point, he sent a picture of Feynman's blackboard with the original quotation, and it was, "What I cannot create, I do not understand." I think it's a much better quotation, and we've gone back to correct the DNA code so that Feynman can rest much more peacefully." --J. Craig Venter - Adriano