The engineering of living organisms could soon start changing everything
By Oliver Morton,
The Economist
| 04. 04. 2019
1 A whole new world
Biology is a way of structuring matter at a molecular scale by slotting each atom into its needful place. It is a way of controlling flows of energy on every scale from that of the smallest living cell to that of the whole living planet. It is a way of growing order and surprise in a universe that in all other respects tends towards entropic stagnation. And it is a thicket of limits on how long lives can last and how much life can accomplish.
It is also a way of packing 3,500 excited young people into the Hynes Convention Centre in Boston, Massachusetts. More than 300 teams from 42 countries took part in the annual International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition there last October. By encouraging such teams to co-operate and compete in its Grand Jamboree, the iGEM foundation is hoping to create a framework for a synthetic-biology industry which combines molecular biology and engineering to achieve specific goals. Over the summer the young people went from an idea about something...
Related Articles
By Tristan Manalac, BioSpace | 04.02.2024
Verve Therapeutics has suspended enrollment in the Phase Ib Heart-1 study evaluating its lead gene editing program VERVE-101 following a serious adverse event, the company announced Tuesday.
A patient, who received a 0.45-mg/kg dose of VERVE-101, developed a grade 3...
By Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres, First Monday | 04.14.2024
The stated goal of many organizations in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) is to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), an imagined system with more intelligence than anything we have ever seen. Without seriously questioning whether such a system can...
By Harold Brubaker, The Philadelphia Inquirer | 04.04.2024
Acompany started by University of Pennsylvania scientist Jim Wilson has received FDA approval to test a form of gene editing in infants for the first time in the United States, the company said Thursday.
The Plymouth Meeting company, iECURE, is...
By Judith Levine, The Intercept | 04.04.2024
WHEN THE ALABAMA Supreme Court ruled that fertilized embryos were “extrauterine children,” it did more than imperil the future of in vitro fertilization in Alabama and, potentially, the U.S. The ruling, on the claimed “wrongful death” of frozen embryos...