GRAND VISION, ROUND 1: With Genome Compiler, you can look at your syntheses on a variety of levels, from the nucleotides to the peptides to the whole organism. GENOME COMPILER MEDIA TEAM
Working at the crossroads of biology and engineering, synthetic biologists are crafting genes, proteins, and organisms that evolution never came up with. They are creating bacteria that produce biofuels and yeast cells that manufacture medicines. They are swapping promoters, ribosome-binding sequences, and open reading frames as if they were Lego bricks.
“We are no longer constrained by what Mother Nature gives us,” says Claes Gustafsson, cofounder of the DNA synthesis company DNA2.0, in Menlo Park, California.
Now, the constraint is the toolkit. Traditional biologists can work with DNA sequences using a simple viewer or editor, but “the engineers need a whole new suite of tools,” says Natalie Kuldell, who teaches biological engineering at MIT.
The synthetic biologist’s mind-set is all about parts, those nucleic acid ...
