Startup Offers Pre-Built Biological Parts 71
TechReviewAl writes "A new startup called Ginkgo BioWorks hopes to make synthetic-biology simpler than ever by assembling biological parts, such as strings of specific genes, for industry and academic scientists. While companies already exist to synthesize pieces of DNA, Ginkgo assembles synthesized pieces of DNA to create functional genetic pathways. (Assembling specific genes into long pieces of DNA is much cheaper than synthesizing that long piece from scratch.) Company cofounder Tom Knight, also a research scientist at MIT, says: 'I'm interested in transitioning biology from being sort of a craft, where every time you do something it's done slightly differently, often in ad hoc ways, to an engineering discipline with standardized methods of arranging information and standardized sets of parts that you can assemble to do things.'"
I'm ready to place my order (Score:5, Funny)
5' 5", 110lbs, female, further details can be found in attached magazine. Do you give volume discounts?
Building blocks (Score:5, Funny)
The key innovation of the BioBrick assembly standard is that a biological engineer can assemble any two BioBrick parts, and the resulting composite object is itself a BioBrick part that can be combined with any other BioBrick parts.
Sounds great in theory. In reality, you'll always be missing one of those stupid little yellow bricks and they won't sell them individually.
Oh Great (Score:1, Funny)
So instead of "enlarge your penis" emails we will get "get a larger penis" emails.
Obligatory reference: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I'm ready to place my order (Score:3, Funny)
Which volume do you want to be discounted?
Re:I'm ready to place my order (Score:5, Funny)