Sebastian Cocioba’s clapboard house on Long Island doesn’t look much like a cutting-edge plant biology lab. Then you step inside and peer down the hallway to see a small nook with just enough standing room for a single scientist. The workshop is stuffed with equipment Cocioba scored on eBay or cobbled together himself with a little engineering knowledge. This is where the 34-year-old attempts to use gene-editing to create new kinds of flowers more beautiful and sweeter smelling than any that currently exist. And it’s also where he hopes to blow the closed-off world of genetic engineering wide open.
Sebastian Cocioba, a plant biotechnology researcher outside