As the researchers reported Oct. 15 in the online journal Biotechnology for Biofuels, they’ve begun to identify which of these genes encode for enzymes that could significantly improve the production of cellulosic ethanol, a fuel made from inedible plant material

At the University of Florida they are studying termite guts. Termite guts are awesome collections of bacteria and micro-organisms that live only in the stomachs of termites and are passed on from generation to generation.

There’s a good overview of things in this article about bioprospecting termites, which is very readable. Gripping science journalism:

He worked at a rapid clip, pulling the insects’ heads and anuses in opposite directions with a microscopically violent yank

The production of biofuels is one of the main ends of the sythetic biology research program. The place of termites in the larger process of making useful life is not without complications, but maybe one day we will see parts of the genetic code for verious termite symbiotes stocked as open wetware. ]]> http://eightprime.net/2009/11/16/formiculture/feed/ 0 http://eightprime.net/2009/11/13/synthetic-biology/ http://eightprime.net/2009/11/13/synthetic-biology/#comments Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:19:13 +0000 eightprime http://eightprime.net/2009/11/13/synthetic-biology/ Just reading a New Yorker article on Synthetic biology and evolution - using the technologies of life to build purposed mechanisms. Grow your own world stuff – it starts with vaccines and fuels and ends up with grow your own habitat. Lovely.

There is, of course, the terrible spectre of something going terribly wrong. We could all die. The world could end. Horror.
But there’s always the terrible spectre of something going terrible wrong. That’s nothing new.

No scientific achievement has promised so much, and none has come with greater risks or clearer possibilities for deliberate abuse. The benefits of new technologies—from genetically engineered food to the wonders of pharmaceuticals—often have been oversold. If the tools of synthetic biology succeed, though, they could turn specialized molecules into tiny, self-contained factories, creating cheap drugs, clean fuels, and new organisms to siphon carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

My favourite bit though is when the auuthor points out that

Little more than a hundred years have passed, however, since Gregor Mendel demonstrated that the defining characteristics of a pea plant—its shape, its size, and the color of the seeds, for example—are transmitted from one generation to the next in ways that can be
predicted, repeated, and codified.

Now they’re working on a living organism built from non-living componente. They will call this organism Synthia.

Found via an interview with the author on Gizmodo.