Biologys Brave New World: The Promise and Perils of the Synbio Revolution by Laurie Garrett Foreign Affairs, November/December 2013 The possibility of the deliberate creation of living organisms from elementary materials that are not themselves alive has engaged the human imagination for a very long time. Putting aside Genesis I, which is singularly lacking in any physical details on the bringing forth of life from the waters and the dust, we think immediately of the classical Greek story of the sculptor Pygmalion. Enamored of the unresponsive goddess Aphrodite, he creates an ivory statue of her, which, under the warmth of his caresses and the powers of Aphrodite herself, slowly softens and warms into a living woman, Galatea. Nor is Galatea any less a biological woman, for she becomes the mother of two children from her union with her human creator. By the middle of the seventeenth century, Descartes had described the life activities of animals as the functioning of a bte machine and in 1748 La Mettrie extended this metaphor to humans as lhomme machine. The acceptance of the machine metaphor has the implication that, just as we can deliberately design and build a mechanical device from manufactured parts, so … Continue reading →

Quick links to other pages on this site | Still can't find it? see Site Index COLUMBIA - New language for high school biology standards is headed for consideration to the State Board of Education that would have students learn "the controversy." The S.C. Education Oversight Committee on Monday sent proposed language to the board that would require biology students to construct scientific arguments that seem to support and seem to discredit Darwinism. The decision comes more than two months after the subject became a divisive issue for many in the Palmetto State and nationally in February, when Sen. Mike Fair, R-Greenville, voiced opposition during the review and approval of a new set of science standards for 2014. At the time, Fair argued against teaching natural selection as fact, adding there are other theories students deserve to learn. He said the best way for students to learn was for the schools to teach "the controversy." On Monday, he reiterated his stance. "We must teach the controversy," Fair said. "There's another side. I'm not afraid of the controversy. ... That's the way most of us learn best." Barbara Hairfield, a Social Studies Curriculum Learning Specialist in the Charleston County School District, … Continue reading →

20 hours ago by Alistair Elfick Advances in gene programming herald exciting possibliities. Credit: Z33 Arts Centre, CC BY-SA Synthetic biology is an emerging discipline, but paradoxically it is not particularly new. Since the mid-1970s we have been developing ways of instructing pieces of biology to perform useful tasks in an ever more efficient and sustainable way. Much of this has found its expression in industrial biotechnology, manufacturing things like drugs, enzymes and proteins. It has applications in everything from biofuels to pollution sensors, from smart plastics to cutting-edge medicines. You could conceive of synthetic biology as writing little DNA programs that instruct cell behaviour, like a little genetic app. Previously all we could do was to take a gene from one organism and give it into another. Now we can rewrite the gene and even write entirely new genes which do not exist in nature. We borrow the cell's machinery, its metabolism, and run the app. It will do whatever the app tells it to do. It becomes like your chassis, or your operating system. First base In first-generation biotech, the instructions were very simple, such as, "make drug". We have become good at that. To take an example, … Continue reading →