ERIC LANDER: My name's Eric Lander,
and I'm going to be teaching MIT's
7.00x, Introduction to Biology,
the Secret of Life.
25 years ago, we began to think about
sequencing the human genome.
At the time, it seemed possible.
BILL CLINTON: We're here to celebrate
the completion of the first survey of
the entire human genome.
Without a doubt, this is the most
important, most wondrous map ever
produced by humankind.
ERIC LANDER: When we the Human Genome
Project we thought it was remarkable.
But we didn't know the half of it.
What's happened since then
is just mind-blowing.
It's become possible to sequence DNA a
1 million times faster and cheaper
than we could before.
We can now read out the secrets of
cancer, of diabetes, of heart disease,
of Alzheimer's disease.
This is one of the most important
revolutions in science.
It's about our health.
It's about our world.
Everybody needs to know about biology.
In 7.00x we're going to teach you the
basics of biology, going all the way
back to Mendel and all the way up to
techniques invented just last week.
The course is going to be an opportunity
to use cutting-edge tools
from the forefront of genomics in
a introductory biology course.
Science is about asking deep fundamental
questions and teasing the
answers out of nature.
This course is designed for anyone.
The prerequisites are none.
You just need an interest and a
curiosity in learning about one of the
greatest scientific stories ever told.
I have never been more excited about the
opportunity for all of us around
the world to talk together about this.
Everybody should know
the secret of life.
