Do-it-yourself biology: Learning to build a better microbe. Anne Trafton,
Building a cell from scratch is a lot more complicated than building a computer. But that's just what synthetic biologists, including many at MIT, are trying to figure out how to do. Using engineering principles, researchers and students in MIT's Department of Biological Engineering are building a set of "off-the shelf parts" for cells, cataloging and assembling bacterial DNA sequences to produce microbes tailored for a specific task. Such bacteria could have numerous applications in medicine, energy and environmental cleanup. MIT biological engineering instructor Natalie Kuldell and recent PhD recipient Reshma Shetty will discuss the possibilities of and obstacles facing synthetic biology at a Soapbox talk, "Do-It-Yourself Biology," at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the MIT Museum. "If you could really program a cell to do your bidding, you could have it spit out drugs really quickly, or spit out biofuels," Kuldell said. "It would be wonderful to replace refineries with small microbial factories." Before that can happen, biologists and biological engineers need to figure out whether engineering approaches can be practically transferred to the life sciences, which tend to be much more unpredictable, Kuldell said. MORE... http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/diy-bio-0113.html _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
