Video Player. Disabled Japanese man begins robo-suit adventure. Evolution machine: Genetic engineering on fast forward - life - 27 June 2011. (Image: Pierluigi Longo) 2 more images Automated genetic tinkering is just the start – this machine could be used to rewrite the language of life and create new species of humans IT IS a strange combination of clumsiness and beauty. Sitting on a cheap-looking worktop is a motley ensemble of flasks, trays and tubes squeezed onto a home-made frame. Arrays of empty pipette tips wait expectantly. Bunches of black and grey wires adorn its corners. On the top, robotic arms slide purposefully back and forth along metal tracks, dropping liquids from one compartment to another in an intricately choreographed dance.
Say hello to the evolution machine. These days everything from your food and clothes to the medicines you take may well come from genetically modified plants or bacteria. Grand ambitions Yet changing even a handful of genes takes huge amounts of time and money. The task is so difficult and time-consuming because biological systems are so complex. A big revolution Completely virus-proof.
DARPA Wants Artificial Lifeforms. Yesterday morning, at the Fifth International Meeting on Synthetic Biology at Stanford University, a representative from the DARPA announced a new program called Living Foundries that will invest in and develop synthetic biology projects. The goal, according to the agency’s program manager Alicia Jackson, is to revolutionize materials science, and to foster projects that will enable the creation and manufacture of materials that are not possible to make today, such as more efficient solar and electronic materials.
To do so, she said, DARPA will get into synthetic biology “in a big way.” The goal is to establish new manufacturing capabilities in the United States. Synthetic biologists try to systematically reengineer cells to do something useful, such as make biofuels. People in the field have great dreams of designing probiotic microbes to kill cancer cells, or remediate the effects of climate change, or make transportation fuels from abundant biomass. Joe DeRisi solves medical mysteries.