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INVASIVE SPECIES hysteria is akin to the 1016 English King Canute (Cnut), who failed to command the rising East Anglian tide to stop. Species have always migrated and found new competitive niches. Ecosystems are dynamic. The fact that they hitch-hike on boats is a mere historical footnote. Marin County CA has an invasive French Broom solution (that is more than fire control): glycophosphate herbicide. King Canute in all his mad glory? " " http://lnkd.in/8xffRc View in LinkedIn

SYNBIO made artemisinin, the anti-malarial drug in bugs not in plants, whose production swings wildly annually. This recent dazzling success story involved OneWorld Health (IOWH, first non-profit Pharma company) and was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: 35 tons treating 70 M people is the fruit of this project. I was on the IOWH board during this memorable achievement. " " http://lnkd.in/6UrJ74 View in LinkedIn

PRINTABLE LIFE FORMS that can be emailed around the world and printed into life? A JC Venter Life Teleporter are likely to become widely available in the foreseeable future. Beyond extraordinary. Is this a new cloning method on the horizon? Currently only the simplest creatures can be replicated this way, but it is inevitable that higher life forms may be emailed and printed, including humans. Rock my boat! View in LinkedIn

SYNBIO GREEN FUELS." ""Imagine if we replaced a third of our transportation fuels and made them renewable. That would be a huge benefit." Here is the dream. Reality may be harder?" " http://lnkd.in/6UrJ74 View in LinkedIn

THE BIOLOGICAL DIGITAL CONVERTER and "printable life forms". Undoubtedly one of the most utterly radical new concepts in this century. This is a"Beam me up Scotty," the teleporter from the Starship Enterprise Sci-Fi, but the hitch is that it has already been done by J Craig Venter. “It’s a 3-D printer for DNA, a 3-D printer for life,” Venter said in October 2012. "Craig Venter imagines a future where you can download software, print a vaccine, inject it, and presto! Contagion averted."" " http://lnkd.in/V375GV View in LinkedIn

STUDENT SYNBIO. Gluten-free diets for those millions with allergies? " ""This work (1) could help millions of gluten allergy sufferers world wide, (2) was done by undergraduates competing in iGEM, an annual synthetic biology competition originally founded at MIT, (3) using gaming software, (4) built on basic research done on an obscure bacterial enzyme, and (5) published with student authors in a peer-reviewed journal."" " http://lnkd.in/s2QVSW View in LinkedIn

THE HAIL MARY GENOME for J Craig Venter is the minimal number of genes of a synthetic bug to be functional. " " http://lnkd.in/m_9BCq View in LinkedIn

ASIMOV (1964) PREDICTED: “Ordinary agriculture will keep up with great difficulty and there will be ‘farms’ turning to the more efficient micro-organisms. Processed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavors.”" " http://lnkd.in/aXM2pm. View in LinkedIn

SYNTHETIC CIRCUITS in living cells with multiple applications. View in LinkedIn

JC VENTER the radical. “Agriculture as we know it needs to disappear,” Venter said. “We can design better and healthier proteins than we get from nature.” By this, he didn’t mean growing apples in a Petri dish. He meant producing bulk commodities like corn, soy and wheat, that we use in processed products like tofu and cereal. “If you can produce the key ingredients with 10 or 100 times the efficiency,” he said, “that’s a better use of land and resources.” http://lnkd.in/m_9BCq. View in LinkedIn