synthetic biology

Scientists Have Created the First Artificial Embryo Without Using an Egg or Sperm

Using stem cells in grown-on 3D scaffolding in a laboratory petri dish, scientists have for the first time created an embryo made entirely from stem cells. The artificial mouse embryo, detailed this month in the journal Science, is a major step toward creating synthetic embryos that closely resemble natural ones. It could shed light on…

Why Humans Will Never Live Off Sunlight

Imagine if we could be like plants, lying outside all day soaking up sweet, sweet energy from the sun. Doesn’t sound like a bad life, does it? So why aren’t the world’s best minds figuring out how to hack photosynthesis into humans? It turns out there are a lot of reasons, which are spelled out…

How Scientists Plan to Grow Cities Out of Living Organisms

Imagine a future where there is no need to cut down a tree and and reshape that raw material into a chair or table. Instead, we could grow our furniture by custom-engineering moss or mushrooms. Perhaps glowing bacteria will light our cities, and we’ll be able to bring back extinct species, or wipe out Lyme…

New Details Emerge About the Plan to Build an Artificial Human Genome

Last month, a group of scientists, lawyers, and entrepreneurs gathered in secret to discuss the possibility of creating a synthetic human genome from scratch. Details of the plan have finally been made public, and it’s as ambitious as it sounds. But critics say they founders of the new project are avoiding the tough ethical questions.…

Mad Scientists Created Synthetic Bacteria With Only 473 Genes

Behold syn3.0, a synthetic bacterial genome that’s smaller than anything found in nature. Biologists hope it will further our understanding of the fundamentals of life and inspire the creation of new synthetic life. Dubbed JCVI-syn3.0 (or just syn3.0 for short), the new genome was designed and built by researchers from Synthetic Genomics and the J.…

Want to Get Into Bio-Hacking? Here’s a Beginner Bioreactor For Engineering Cells At Home

Bioengineering is pervasive these days–just look at your medicine, your makeup, or your food–but the science behind it is still pretty inaccessible to tinkerers. Enter Amino: A small bioengineering lab that will walk you through the process of creating everything from glow-in-the-dark cells to an anti-cancer research compound. Amino was an MIT Media Lab project…

Legos Are Surprisingly Effective at Explaining Synthetic Biology

The emerging discipline of synthetic biology is poised to change many aspects of our lives, from the production of medicines and bio-fuels through to genetic engineering and the development of completely new biological systems. It’s a technologically daunting prospect, but this video from Grist uses Legos and skateboards to make it all so perfectly clear.

The Controversial, Mad Science Strategy to Save Earth’s Rhinos 

Rhino horn is more precious than gold on the black market, and our insatiable demand for the stuff has driven rhinos to the brink of extinction. Now a Seattle-based startup has a radical plan to save these incredible animals: Using synthetic biology to manufacture rhino horns in the lab. The biotech company Pembient says it…

The Future Will Run on Algae

In the twentieth century, oil was black gold. But as we march deeper into the twenty-first century, we could have a lucrative new fuel on our hands. One that’s blue-green and sometimes a little smelly. It’s found in wastewater, but it’s capable of powering jets. It’s algae. How It Works To be specific, it’s actually…

The Jurassic Park Science to Bring Back Dinosaurs Is Almost Here

Twenty five years ago, Michael Crichton captured our imaginations with the crazy idea that scientists might one day resurrect dinosaurs. But on the eve of Jurassic World’s release a quarter century later, the prospect of bringing back extinct creatures is looking a lot less science fictional. We’ll probably never bring back Tyrannosaurus rex. (Mosquitos with…

This Biotech Startup Wants to Brew Yeast That Smells Like Perfume

Yeast labs have a distinctive smell—a bready scent familiar to bakers and brewers. But the frozen test tube of yeast I held at Ginkgo Bioworks had a fragrance crisp and pear-like. It was definitely yeast, but it had been genetically engineered to smell like no yeast has ever smelled. Its headquarters—or foundry, as the company…

Making Heroin Could One Day Be As Easy As Brewing Beer

Breakthroughs in synthetic biology have suggested a bizarre and realistic possibility for the future of black market drug trade. Genetically-altered yeast could be used to make opiates for hospitals seeking a source of the painkillers — and then appropriated by drug dealers who want to homebrew heroin. Over at Wired, Lexi Pandell reports on a…

Genetic Engineers Are Building a Biological Kill Switch

The fear of genetically-modified creatures escaping from the lab is the basis for a thousand sci-fi stories, but it’s also a legitimate concern. That’s why genetic engineers are inventing kill switches, or genetically-encoded suicide triggers, for GMOs they want to keep contained. Here’s how they work. Why we need kill switches When we talk about…

Welcome to the Future Zoo, Home to a Menagerie of Creepy Mutants

We love to imagine how biotechnology might one day enhance our fleshy bodies, but too often, Earth’s wildlife are left out of the future entirely. Enter Kathryn Fleming’s future zoo, filled with a menagerie of fantastical, slightly disturbing, genetically modified mutants. With last year’s sobering news that 40% of all wild vertebrates have disappeared from…

A Perfume That Smells Like Roses—But Is Actually Made from Yeast

A rose is a rose is a rose, except when it’s actually a yeast. A company called Ginkgo BioWorks in Boston is partnering with French fragrance company Robertet to create a genetically-modified yeast that makes the rose oil used in perfumes. Why go through all the trouble of recreating rose oil with yeast? The goal…

What Do You Think Will Be the Doom of Civilization?

It’s probably true that every generation thinks it’ll be the last—I mean, the Doomsday Clock has been ticking since 1947. And though I accused us millennials earlier today of being the “generation that cried apocalypse,” I fully admit there are some damn legit reasons for that cry currently brewing. A report out this week from…

What happens when amateur scientists doing synthetic biology as DiY projects, building new organisms and modifying old ones? A group of scientists raised the alarm about the risks of backyard synbio in Nature recently, and it’s the topic of a lively discussion on the Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast. Check it out!

Are The Threats From Synthetic Bioweapons Being Exaggerated?

The advent of synthetic biology and DNA synthesis has raised concern that amateurs will use these technologies to turn pathogens into weapons of mass destruction. But as experts point out, this may be far easier said than done. As argued by Catherine Jefferson, Filippa Lentzos, and Claire Marris — all researchers in the Department of…

A New Kind of Baker’s Yeast That Gets You High

The powerful painkiller morphine comes from opium poppies, which only grow in a few places around the world. But now, a group of bioengineers are on the cusp of creating a modified form of baker’s yeast that can synthesize the drug. What happens when we can brew up heroin in a vat of yeast? Photo…

Scientists Engineer E. Coli to Make Propane

E. coli is an exceedingly common bacteria that lives in many places including your very own gut. It’s also a favorite organism for synthetic biologists looking to engineer useful microbes. By inserting just a few genes in E. coli, scientists have found they can coax the bacterium intomaking ready-to-use propane. You might know propane best…