"biology" entries

Note: This ends Quinn Norton's five-part series on Drew Endy and synthetic biology. The earlier installments are Everything you needed to know about human-created life forms but were afraid to ask, The dummy's guide to engineering genes, Play God for fun and profit (mostly fun), and Managing the unmanagable future. "Biology is a technology for manufacturing," says Drew Endy. Engineered…

Note: This is the fourth of Quinn Norton's five-part series on Drew Endy and synthetic biology. The earlier installments are Everything you needed to know about human-created life forms but were afraid to ask, The dummy's guide to engineering genes, and Play God for fun and profit (mostly fun). Extraordinary opportunities for yet-unknowable creativity nearly always comes with the threat…

Note: This is the third of Quinn Norton's five-part series on Drew Endy and synthetic biology. The earlier installments are Everything you needed to know about human-created life forms but were afraid to ask and The dummy's guide to engineering genes. Three years after Tom Knight invented the first standard for hooking together genetic parts in a living programming language,…

Note: Yesterday we began Quinn Norton's five-part series on Drew Endy and synthetic biology with "Everything you needed to know about human-created life forms but were afraid to ask." Photo courtesy of Mike & Amanda Knowles, via flickr. Dr. Drew Endy's approach to the next generation of bio technology depends on engineers, programmers, hackers, social theorists, lawyers and so forth,…

One of the great pleasures of being involved with O'Reilly Media is learning from the many fascinating people who get involved with the company on one level or another. They're Friends of O'Reilly, or Foos. We have occasional get-togethers with Foos, our own Nat Torkington has taken the concept to New Zealand, and we have one — on the social…