For centuries, humans rummaged around. We built homes with gathered wood. We stretched animal skins. The Earth provided ready-made building blocks — for front doors, and for shoes — and our material needs were met...
Author - Ian Haydon
Highlights of SynBioBeta 2018 Day 3, Twist $86.3M IPO, Pivot Bio’s $70M, Genomatica’s $90M
John Cumbers took the stage to welcome our community and announce that Twist Bioscience filed for a $86.3M IPO! He also mentioned that the Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded jointly to three scientists whose work...
Highlights of SynBioBeta Day 2: Neobiological revolution, bio is not another app, living medicines, and biosecurity
What a jam-packed second day today! We kicked things off with an energizing fireside chat on the coming together of neuroscience and synthetic biology – and the neobiological revolution we’ve all been witnessing in real...
Highlights of Day 1 of SynBioBeta 2018: Mushroom stage, The homebrew computer club meets DIYBio, Engineering Biology Awards
Enjoying Synthetic Biology Week? Share your stories with #synbiobeta2018 The conference began with a discussion between P&G Director Lee Ellen Drechsler and Ecovative CEO Eben Bayer, moderated by D.A. Wallach of...
Towards data-driven biotechnology
Want to know whether a company is fit for the future? Measure what it does with bytes, not barrels. Data centers are the new oil refineries, argues The Economist. Where black sludge and steam once marked the beating...
Are programmable plants the future of farming?
After publishing On The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin turned his formidable attention away from grand theories of evolution and towards another biological mystery: the subtle behavior of plants. At his home in...
Synthetic Biologists Can Learn from Zuckerberg’s Mistakes
“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake.” Before his grilling on Capitol Hill this week, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg issued an apology. In a...
DARPA Awards Ginkgo Bioworks and Transcriptic $9.5M to Bring AI into the Lab
The industry partners will use the money to train artificially intelligent laboratory robots. Many people assume that when robots enter the economy, they’ll snatch low-skilled jobs. But don’t let a PhD fool you — AI...
To Go Green, Synthetic Biologists Should Think Blue
An innovation prize awaits anyone who develops sustainable “fish-free” fish oils. This article is brought to you by our sponsor, The F3 Challenge. Globally, we eat a lot of fish. Fish exports reeled in $148 billion...
Open Philanthropy Project awards $11.3M to UW’s Institute for Protein Design
It’s the philanthropy’s largest scientific research grant to any university to date. The goal? A universal flu vaccine. When Dustin Moskovitz was writing the code that would become Facebook in his college dorm room, he...
