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OPEN SOURCE SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY and gamification as an approach to big world problems. Time for out-of-the-box thinking and a bit of craziness. Put on your thinking hats and choose a project. Change the world!" " http://lnkd.in/frBre3 View in LinkedIn

GEORGE CHURCH backs an initiative to make trees glow in the dark with a firefly enzyme insertion. I was involved in such a frivolous dream 29 years ago; today it is not a big deal, and glowing goldfish have already been engineered. It is symbolic of SynBio. This was using crowd funding and open source innovation. It has the potential to solve lots of problems today. " " http://lnkd.in/ymR7Zs View in LinkedIn

TOP BIG GLOBAL PROBLEMS (and opportunities) we can think about solving with our new synthetic biology tools. Our overpopulated world needs solutions to problems, and there are expansive issues to tackle. " "1. Clean water; 2. Hunger; 3. Disease; 4. Pollution; 5. Antibiotic resistance; 6. Global warming; 7. Clean fuels; 8. Recycling resources; 9. Higher intelligence; 10. Resources on other planets, and the issue of extraterrestrial life; 11. Enhanced living. View in LinkedIn

CREATION OF NEW LIFE FORMS by synthetic biology is the stunning opportunity of this century. I have gone to some trouble to show that nature has been involved in this same project since the start of life, on a massive scale, and with every possible mechanism. Our efforts will be small by comparison but rational. By definition we will start with preexisting genes and by definition, it will be a hybrid new life form. The key question is what big human or global problem do we wish to solve with this amazing new technology? View in LinkedIn

TISSUE-ELECTRONIC HYBRID grown in test tube. "The next step is to find a way of talking to the individual cells, to “wire up tissue and communicate with it in the same way a biological system does."" " http://lnkd.in/shNXZ8 View in LinkedIn

DNA PARASITES jumping genes, ("junk DNA", transposons) have a strongly beneficial aspect that probably outweighs their rarer pathological effects, and the host can borrow this invasive machinery for its own purposes. "transposable elements play an important role in the evolution of eukaryotic chromosome structure. Recruitment of transposable elements by the host for specific structures to perform novel functions is one of the structural functions."" " http://lnkd.in/qafMef View in LinkedIn

DNA PARASITIC jumping genes are highly varied, complex and widespread. This is a terrific review of current knowledge." " http://lnkd.in/XQ6J9J View in LinkedIn

GENETICALLY ENGINEERED PLANTS (GMO) are simply old hat, and evolution has been tinkering with this for aeons. "Much, if not most, changes that occur to plant chromosomes during evolution is generated by dynamic rearrangement of plant DNA orchestrated by mobile parasitic DNA. Typical plant genomes can contain about 90 percent of their DNA as the remnants of the past movement and multiplication of mobile DNA, reflecting the huge amount of mobile DNA multiplication that occurs during plant evolution."" " http://academicsreview.org/reviewed-content/genetic-roulette/section-2/2-7-mobile-dna/ View in LinkedIn

PARADIGM SHIFT: "A paradigm shift because, until now, horizontal transfer has been seen as very rare in animal species. It's actually a lot more common than we think....the hAT transposon invasion occurred about 30 million years ago and spread across at least two continents. The hAT transposon does not occur in humans, but some 45% of our genome is of transposon origin."It's like a pandemic, and one that can infect species that weren't genetically or geographically close...."" " http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14992-space-invader-dna-infiltrated-mammalian-genomes.html#.Ug4Iovoayc0p View in LinkedIn

EPIGENETICS, the modifications of DNA by methods like methylation, controls the expression of jumping genes, often acting to silence them. " " http://lnkd.in/FekDZi View in LinkedIn