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DAWKINS, The Selfish Gene suggests genes as the units of selection where alliances of genes are formed and sometimes broken. View in LinkedIn

SELFISH GENE. "Dawkins sees evolution as a competition between gene lineages, where organisms are vehicles for those genes. Gould, a paleontologist in the tradition of George Gaylord Simpson, has a different perspective. For example, he sees chance as very important, and views organisms as being more important than genes." " " http://lnkd.in/dv8mVGN View in LinkedIn

GENES VS ORGANISMS as evolutionary units. "'Dawkins vs. Gould: Survival of the Fittest' is a book by philosopher of biology Kim Sterelny about the differing views of biologists Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould. When first published in 2001 it became an international bestseller. A new edition was published in 2007 to include Gould's The Structure of Evolutionary Theory,"" " http://lnkd.in/dv8mVGN View in LinkedIn

SYNBIO IN HIGH SCHOOLS. "The International Genetically Engineered Machines Competition manages the creation and standardization of BioBrick parts as a means to allow undergraduate and high school students to design their own synthetic biological circuits." This makes it relatively simple and inexpensive." " http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biological_circuit View in LinkedIn

ELECTRICAL LEGO. "By assembling genetic components into “circuits” that perform logical operations in living cells, synthetic biologists aim to artificially empower cells to solve critical problems in medicine, energy and the environment."" " http://lnkd.in/dW8rn6z View in LinkedIn

DESIGNER LIFE. "A major objective of synthetic biology is to make the process of designing genetically encoded biological systems more systematic, predictable, robust, scalable, and efficient. Examples of genetic systems in the field vary widely in terms of operating hosts, compositional approaches, and network complexity, ranging from simple genetic switches to search-and-destroy systems." " " http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-chembioeng-061312-103351?journalCode=chembioeng View in LinkedIn

BIOLOGY AS PROGRAMMABLE CIRCUITS. "Researchers increasingly envision an important role for artificial biochemical circuits in biological engineering, much like electrical circuits in electrical engineering. Similar to electrical circuits, which control electromechanical devices, biochemical circuits could be utilized as a type of servomechanism to control nanodevices in vitro, monitor chemical reactions in situ, or regulate gene expressions in vivo."" " http://lnkd.in/d-Ep29M View in LinkedIn

FRESH PERSPECTIVE ON COMPLEXITY: simplify it. "Synthetic biological circuits are an application of synthetic biology where biological parts inside a cell are designed to perform logical functions mimicking those observed in electronic networks. The goal of synthetic biology is to generate an array of tunable and characterized parts, or modules, with which any desirable synthetic biological circuit can be easily designed and implemented."" " http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biological_circuit View in LinkedIn

DNA IS A FOSSIL RECORD, littered with old copies of code from parasitic DNA (transposable elements), some over 900 million years old, making up to 80% of a genome of some species. Some of these randomly incorporated bits of parasitic DNA still have functionality in the modern host. " " http://lnkd.in/dEuD5fG View in LinkedIn

THE SOURCE CODE. "The language of DNA is digital but not binary. Encoding has 0 and 1 to work with (hence the 'bi'nary). DNA has 4 positions T, C, G and A; whereas a digital byte is mostly 8 binary digits, a DNA 'byte' (called a codon) has 3 digits. Because each digit can have 4 values instead of 2, a DNA codon has 64 possible values, compared to a binary byte which has 256. A typical DNA codon is 'GCC' which codes the amino acid alanine." Together these string together to make proteins, and all living things." " http://lnkd.in/dghBZfW View in LinkedIn