Skip to content

Monthly Archives: December 2009

Water Woes, Rules, and Resistance

Today, another article in the New York Times remarkable series on the U.S. water supply. Charles Duhigg writes: “The 35-year-old federal law regulating tap water is so out of date that the water Americans drink can pose what scientists say are serious health risks — and still be legal. Only 91 contaminants are regulated by […]

George Church in Newsweek: Why Get Your Genome Sequenced?

In a “web exclusive” for Newsweek (meaning, no room for this in our shrinking paper magazine), George M. Church, Harvard professor of genetics, a co-founder of DTC genomics firm Knome, and an adviser to several other DNA diagnostic companies, writes: “The message is not ‘Here’s your destiny. Get used to it!’ Instead, it’s ‘Here’s your […]

One-Page Synbio Intro, Courtesy of Seed Magazine

To print up your own copy of this stellar one-sheeter written by Drew Endy and Seed editor Lee Billing, go here.

Water: The Wake-Up Call Goes Unanswered

Last year, I wrote an article for Inc. magazine on entrepreneurs who are addressing some of the big issues around water supply, which for the sake of simplicity can really be boiled down to two: increasing scarcity and decreasing quality. Since then, I’ve blogged occasionally on the EPA’s extreme lethargy in acting on a long […]

One Word: Plastics

It’s looking more and more like the first big proof-of-concept for commercial synthetic biology will be in biofuels or so-called white or green chemistry — the production of “clean” organic chemicals and materials with the aid of biotechnology, using the same sort of souped-up fermentation process being tried out for fuels. The November 26th 2009 […]

Communication Skills, Bacterial and Human

The Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Holiday Lectures for 2009, presented last week, introduced selected high school students to microbiologist Bonnie Bassler and Baldomero Olivera, an expert on poisonous snails, who discussed their seemingly esoteric studies and the powerful practical applications they are leading to. I’m a huge fan of Bonnie Bassler, a professor of molecular […]