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Notes, thoughts, and news on synthetic biology by Christina Agapakis.
Category: future
Yesterday I mentioned Symbiotic Households, an art project imagining genetically engineered mosquitoes that provide mood stabilizing compounds to a population plagued by worries caused by climate change. Today on twitter I saw a link to a US patent application filed...
Posted by Christina Agapakis at 5:03 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: silk
There was some big news yesterday in transgenic silk from Notre Dame and the University of Wyoming, where scientists have genetically engineered silkworms to produce silk that is a mixture of spider silk and the regular silkworm stuff. Silkworms produce...
Posted by Christina Agapakis at 11:33 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: cyborg
A lot of synthetic biology is about getting biology to be more like electrical engineering, designing genetic "logic gates" to create a living circuit board. Beyond analogies, however, cells have many fascinating electrical properties--proteins that transfer electrons like wires, membranes...
Posted by Christina Agapakis at 10:27 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: bioenergy
There's a terrific new article in New Scientist about some of the ways scientists are working on turning pee into energy. There's a lot of pee in the world all going to waste, often at huge cost to the environment...
Posted by Christina Agapakis at 10:42 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: sustainability
Many people in synthetic biology, including myself and much of my lab, are working on using biology to make things more efficiently, renewably, and sustainably. Being able to make plastic replacing biomaterials, chemicals, medicines, and fuels in living cells from...
Posted by Christina Agapakis at 2:07 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: synthetic biology
I got a lot of interesting responses to my post about DIYbio and how modeling innovation in biotech on computer hacker culture may lead to a science that is less "democratized" than what is being proposed. My friend Adam pointed...
Posted by Christina Agapakis at 10:47 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: cyborg
Synthetic biology deliberately equates genetic networks to electronic circuits, cells to machines, organisms to factories. In synthetic biology, every living can be thought of as a cyborg, a living machine that can be manipulated, changed to meet our needs, parts...
Posted by Christina Agapakis at 11:00 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: papers
My paper, "Insulation of a synthetic hydrogen metabolism circuit in bacteria" just came out in the Journal of Biological Engineering! And it's open access! We designed a metabolic circuit in bacteria that produces hydrogen (a potentially useful fuel) from natural...
Posted by Christina Agapakis at 9:40 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: books
A review of Rob Carlson's new book.
Posted by Christina Agapakis at 10:22 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: bioenergy
Riversimple, a small UK-based company, has designed a tiny, relatively cheap, and remarkably open-source hydrogen fuel cell car. The car will not be available for sale, but people will be able to lease it, with the lease agreement including maintenance,...
Posted by Christina Agapakis at 10:44 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
