Hello World!

Hello! I'm so excited to be joining the ScienceBlogs community! I'll be focusing mostly on synthetic biology, defined in the past decade as two main approaches to life science research:

One uses unnatural molecules to reproduce emergent behaviours from natural biology, with the goal of creating artificial life. The other seeks interchangeable parts from natural biology to assemble into systems that function unnaturally. Either way, a synthetic goal forces scientists to cross uncharted ground to encounter and solve problems that are not easily encountered through analysis.

(from Benner and Sismour, 2005)

My definition is a usually little more open and historically accepting, encompassing all genetic and metabolic engineering, origin of life research, and basically anything that has ever tried to recreate or redesign living systems. Synthetic biology and biologically inspired engineering (and biologically inspired design and art) are affecting how we think about life and how we study it, and I'm thrilled to have the chance to discuss it here with all of you!