Diverse perspectives on science and medicine
0000-0002-6828-1000 The synthetic organisms hall of fame has a new member: Syn61, an E. coli with all its genome replaced by a synthetic version. Designing and building organisms from scratch could be the Holy Grail
0000-0003-0319-5416We continue to improve our ability to read, write, and edit DNA on larger and larger scales. GP-write wants to gather and coordinate the global enthusiasm around large-scale genome engineering to bring about some major
0000-0003-0319-5416Guest post by Markus Schmidt In 2010 scientists from the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) announced the creation of the first bacterial cell controlled by a chemically synthesized genome (1). The so-called “synthetic” cell was
0000-0002-6828-1000By Konstantinos Vavitsas and Jestin George Synthetic biology as we commonly know it is often described in its scientifically specific context, or in the context of its effects on society and the environment. However, another
0000-0003-0319-5416The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are working to develop a report on security concerns around synthetic biology. The committee recently put out its initial report, “A Proposed Framework For Identifying Potential Biodefense Vulnerabilities Posed
0000-0002-6828-1000– What I cannot create, I do not understand. This sentence taken from Richard Feynman’s board at the time of his death essentially captures, if applied to a biological frame, the holy grail of synthetic
0000-0003-0319-5416Reports of a “secret” meeting on synthetic human genomes have caused quite the uproar online. Some of the headlines and comments conjured up sci-fi plots of new artificial humans. While many predictably overhyped the meeting, there
Syn3.0, the minimal free-living organism with a 531 kb, 473-gene synthetic genome, recently designed and built at the J. Craig Venter Institute, inspired significant excitement and speculation within the biology community. The work itself represented a technical tour-de-force of
J. Craig Venter and his colleagues at Synthetic Genomics Inc update their efforts to create a “hypothetical minimal genome” in this week’s Science. “JCVI-syn3.0,” or syn3.0 for short, is about 531,000 base pairs organized into 473 genes,
