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BIOPUNK. "iGEM stands for the “International Genetically Engineered Machines” competition. Thousands of student bioengineers from all over the world construct new life forms and race them every year at the Giant Jamboree in Boston. iGEM has been going on for ten years (2,500 competitors this year, over 32 countries, 20,000+ alumni) and gives a peerless window into the global grassroots synthetic-biology revolution." https://lnkd.in/d7F2bmz View in LinkedIn

DIAL UP PROPERTIES. "A future bio designer should be able to code the properties of a living system…by describing the desired features in a biological programming language. That programming language could be DNA, properly understood; but a better analogy might be to see DNA as the machine language — the 1s and 0s, of biology." https://lnkd.in/diYQdpu View in LinkedIn

ECONOMIC DRIVER. "Synbio could produce both transformative science and big business. By some estimates, the global market for synthetic biology is projected to grow to $16 billion by 2018. Much of the anticipated activity centers on pharmaceuticals, diagnostic tools, chemicals, and energy products, such as biofuels." https://lnkd.in/dgV87Ca View in LinkedIn

CREATING GENETIC MACHINES. "If genetic sequencing is about reading DNA, and genetic engineering as we know it is about copying, cutting and pasting it, synthetic biology is about writing and programming new DNA with two main goals: create genetic machines from scratch and gain new insights about how life works." https://lnkd.in/dgV87Ca View in LinkedIn

BIOCHIP IMPLANTS. "Molecular computing circuits...will be embedded in a biological host." http://www.dna.caltech.edu/Papers/Denmark_Workshop_2013.pdf View in LinkedIn

ADAPTING DNA. "Given the large computational power of DNA systems, one challenge would be to adapt them to intracellular operation. Potential solutions could include the move from DNA to RNA building blocks (thus making them amenable to genetic encoding) or even developing peptide-based circuits that recapitulate some nucleic acids features." http://www.dna.caltech.edu/Papers/Denmark_Workshop_2013.pdf View in LinkedIn

"MOLECULAR DEVICES made of nucleic acids show great potential for applications ranging from bio-sensing to intelligent nanomedicine. They allow computation to be performed at the molecular scale, while also interfacing directly with the molecular components of living systems. They form structures that are stable inside cells, and their interactions can be precisely controlled by modifying their nucleotide sequences." https://lnkd.in/dGaUYNR View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this short weekend looking at the difference between the agendas of sexual partners in fruit flies. Not only is the rate of evolution of proteins involved in sexual reproduction faster than somatic proteins, but the triggering of reproductive readiness in the two sexes is very different. The female gets massively changed. At least in fruit flies, the male and female are quite divergent biologically, behaviorally, and genetically, and continue to evolve in different but complementary trajectories. View in LinkedIn

ANTAGONISTIC SEX. “Overall, our results provide strong evidence that much of the molecular interplay between the sexes that occurs after mating has been shaped by conflict between the sexes and is generally not cooperative in nature. The idea that antagonism dominates male–female interactions has received support from many previous experimental evolution studies. Our results add to this body of work by demonstrating the breadth of this antagonism in the expression of genes involved in post-copulatory interactions.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jeb.12763/full View in LinkedIn

SEXUAL ECONOMICS. “These results support the notion that the receipt of SFPs comes at a net cost to female fitness and, under monogamy, males have evolved to reduce these costs to their single reproductive partner.” (SFPs = male seminal fluid proteins). http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jeb.12763/full View in LinkedIn