If you've any interest in geonomics, synthetic biology, or engineered evolution, you should check out the nearly six hours of lectures sponsored by Edge.org, presented by Drs. George Church and Craig Venter (mostly the former). Unless you've been following these areas month-by-month, you're out of date. Progress in gene sequencing has accelerated to a 10x improvement per year. Venter and others have figured out how to borrow naturally occurring mechanisms to aid the assembly of much larger artificial genomes. Results are being obtained in days that would formerly take months, or were in the realm of science fiction. If you haven't time for the whole thing, try segment four for the densest presentation of new developments, though you'll need some prior background to keep up. This one of the best up-to-speed briefs you're ever going to find for free. Hats off to the Edge guys.