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Thinking Big, or, If We Can Think it, We Can Sell It
Have a look at this promotional dreck from Fidelity Investments, on the wonders of synthetic biology. It sounds fantastic until you realize, their fictions are spun as thin as goat-milk spider silk. As microbiologist Ignacio Chapela has said, “They believe that if they can take an organism with wings, and combine it with a creature […]
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DNA construction technology makes genetic engineering cheaper, faster
Cross-posted from: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-dna-technology-genetic-cheaper-faster.html#jCp October 2, 2012 by Julie Chao Sequencing, splicing and expressing DNA may seem to be the quintessence of cutting-edge science—indeed DNA manipulation has revolutionized fields such as biofuels, chemicals and medicine. But in fact, the actual process can still be tedious and labor-intensive, something Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientist Nathan Hillson […]
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Richmond leaders to call on Chevron to join Berkeley lab in investing in city’s shoreline district
By Robert Rogers, Contra Costa Times, Cross-posted from the San Jose Mercury-News RICHMOND — Developers and business leaders have exhorted Chevron to expand operations in the city’s Marina Bay district, and now elected officials are set to join the chorus. The City Council is expected on Tuesday to pass a resolution urging its largest taxpayer to […]
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Important talk: Questioning the Green Agenda
For local readers, here’s an important event coming up next week. See you there!
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UN: ‘More should be done’ to prevent bio-terrorism
Cross-posted from the BBC By Katia Moskvitch Technology reporter, BBC News, Cambridge A UN official delivered the warning at the BioDesign Forum on synthetic biology being held in the UK. Piers Millet from the UN’s Biological Weapons Convention said there was no global organisation to ensure biotech was not used for “nefarious” purposes. But international bodies did […]
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Pentagon behind on predicting chemical, biological threats
By Kevin Baron Monday, September 24, 2012 Share Cross-posted from Foreign Policy The Pentagon does not have a clear idea of how adversaries could misuse modern biotechnology and chemical advances, according to the Defense Department’s chief chemical and biological defense official. It turns out the Pentagon can move people faster than the speed of sound but not […]
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Weird Science: The Promise and Peril of Synthetic Biology
By Jeff Conant, from Earth Island Journal, Autumn, 2012 In 1971, a microbiologist named Ananda Chakrabarty patented a bacteria genetically engineered to degrade and destroy crude oil. The next year scientists created the first synthesized gene, a bit of yeast RNA ushered into existence virtually from scratch. These discoveries, among others, raised the curtain on the science of […]
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Intro to the LBNL Institute for Globally Transformative Technologies (LIGTT)
A new initiative of LBNL is the Institute for Globally Transformative Technologies; from a certain perspective, the work of this institute appears to be focused on providing essential services to the world’s poor. But given the history of the key actors, it is reasonable to be concerned that this initiative, rather than challenging the exercise of […]
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The Rise And Fall Of The Company That Was Going To Have Us All Using Biofuels
By Daniel Grushkin, cross-posted from Fast Company August 8, 2012 Amyris’s breakthroughs in bioengineering–and its plans to make biofuels from Brazilian sugarcane–promised to transform how the world’s businesses produce energy, cosmetics, and medicine. Then reality (and Wall Street) got in the way. Fields of Dreams: Sugarcane plantations next to Amyris’s Paraíso plant near São Paulo […]
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Scorecard Chides Administration on Synthetic Bio Policy Follow-Up
Cross-posted from GenEng News President Barack Obama’s administration has not fully addressed any of the recommendations made by its Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues a year and a half ago for improving the governance of synthetic biology research and development, a policy group asserted. The Synthetic Biology Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars acknowledged […]