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Notes, thoughts, and news on synthetic biology by Christina Agapakis.
Category: cyborg
Beautiful video imagining the future of augmented, prosthetic sight, by Superflux for the Human+ exhibition: Song of the Machine from Superflux on Vimeo. You can read more about the science behind retinal prosthetics in a great article in the Guardian...
Posted by Christina Agapakis at 11:43 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: bioenergy
I had a great conversation with Maggie Koerth-Baker from BoingBoing for bloggingheads.tv Science Saturday. We talked about all sorts of sciency stuff, including her upcoming book on the challenges of renewable energy, synthetic biology, the similarities between cheese and the...
Posted by Christina Agapakis at 10:16 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: design
Synthetic biologists work on designing living cells, but engineered bacteria don't usually come up when you think of "designer" things. This year however, a synthetic biology design is up for a Brit Insurance Design of the Year award, up against...
Posted by Christina Agapakis at 8:42 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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: art
With The Symbiotic Household, Elliott P. Montgomery seeks to find answers to problems caused by climate change. Low-cost, low energy solutions are proposed through complex genetic engineering of domesticated insects--"What better way to deal with a future need than...
Posted by Christina Agapakis at 6:27 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: iGEM
It's been a few weeks since the iGEM jamboree, a whirlwind, completely exhausting weekend of student synthetic biology projects. This tweet from Robin Sloan from the #igem2010 stream is a pretty good way to sum up the weekend: .bbpBox987719207489536...
Posted by Christina Agapakis at 3:32 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: synthetic biology
The reaction to the Venter Institute's synthetic genome transplantation has been decidedly mixed. Is this the beginning of something new and wonderful, the ability to really design organisms from scratch? Is it something more sinister, the beginning of a dark...
Posted by Christina Agapakis at 11:10 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: artificial life
The J. Craig Venter Institute has just announced the creation of the first bacterial cell controlled by a genome that is entirely chemically synthesized (PDF). The group has been working towards this goal for several years now, first working out...
Posted by Christina Agapakis at 1:25 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: astrobiology
Are aliens little green men of unpredictable motives? Horrible insect-like face-hugging, chest-exploding monsters? Are they super-smart, super-slimy, super-fishy, body-cavity-probing, disc-flying creatures, searching for planets to colonize and people to destroy as Stephen Hawking warned, or are they something much more...
Posted by Christina Agapakis at 10:33 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: art
I'm a little late in posting about the recent work of Tuur Van Balen, a Belgian designer who uses art and design to explore the boundaries between people and technology. His work has explored synthetic biology and biotechnology for years,...
Posted by Christina Agapakis at 4:07 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
denialism blog 02.14.2012
respectful insolence 02.14.2012
uncertain principles 02.13.2012
confessions of a science librarian 02.13.2012
starts with a bang! 02.13.2012
