Regenesis

Harvard biologist George M. Church and science writer Ed Regis survey synthetic biology, in which living organisms are changed by rewriting large parts of their genomes. The approach can create entirely new species, and the authors describe what it might yield: new drugs and vaccines, biofuels and vast supplies of renewable energy, and even resurrected woolly mammoths. They argue that, far from the runaway nightmare of science fiction, these technologies could improve human and animal health, raise intelligence, sharpen memory and lengthen life. The book weighs the perils of the field as well as its possibilities.

Marvin Liao, a 500 Startups partner, listed it in a Book-Talk interview among several books he was reading in parallel.