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Biotech in the Blogosphere

Wow, what a blog post title, “Synthetic Biology: Why Not Pursuing Crazy Biotech Is Dangerous.” The the crew at Gizmodo who came up with that title talks with Michael Spector who covers science for the New Yorker and is the author of Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives. The Gizmodo crew says about their discussion with Specter,

“For our discussion—fitting the theme of This Cyborg Life—we singled out synthetic biology, a pursuit, as Specter describes it, that "by combining elements of engineering, chemistry, computer science and molecular biology, seeks nothing less than to assemble the biological tools necessary to redesign the living world."

To find out what Specter had to say about synthetic biology read the blog. Next, Xconomy of San Diego, writes a post, Big Energy Collaborations Seen to Jump-Start Emerging Biofuels Technologies . Xconomy attended presentations organized by Biocom, San Diego’s life sciences industry group. Xconomy says according to industry experts at the conference,

“As startups developing next-generation biofuels emerge in San Diego, Boston, and elsewhere, a business model for rapidly expanding to commercial-scale operations already can be found in the biotech industry”
“The premise of presentations organized by Biocom, San Diego’s life sciences industry group, is that collaborations being formed between biofuel startups and big energy are comparable to the partnerships formed between biotech startups and big pharmaceutical companies.”

Slice of MIT writes about, Synthetic Biology Rodeo: Designing Living Materials at iGEM where they mention a story on the iGEM competiton in WIRED UK. Slice of MIT says,

“The Wired story, written as a first-person account by a friend of the winning team, describes arriving at MIT with the crew from the UK: “seven rainbow-haired undergraduates who spent their summer engineering a new kind of E.coli that secretes a palette of seven colors, christened E. chromi after a tense online vote.”

To find out more about iGEM, check out the slice of MIT.