Jason Bobe pointed out on the DIYbio mailing list that video is now available online from the 1976 Cambridge, MA city council hearings on recombinant DNA technology. MIT Tech TV I saw this video a few years ago on VHS and was fascinated by the obvious parallels by the debates then on recombinant DNA and [...]

Our Ginkgo video “Who are the bioengineers of the future?” won the Online Audience Award at the Bio:Fiction Science, Art and Film Festival in Vienna. Congrats Christina and Patrick!

For your consideration … brought to you by our friends at Hydrocalypse Industries.

Our friend Pete Carr who’s at MIT’s Media Lab came by for a visit last week. Apparently, Pete used to work for Cetus and through his connections there managed to figure out exactly where in Yellowstone National Park is Mushroom Pool, the location where Thomas Brock first discovered Thermus aquaticus in 1966. The thermophile Thermus [...]

Since microbes are currently our favorite organisms to engineer here at Ginkgo, it was great to see Wisconsin recognize the first official state microbe! Of course they chose Lactococcus lactis, the bacterium used to make many popular cheeses.   Maybe we can convince Massachusetts to choose E.coli as a state microbe for all the biotech drugs it [...]

I had missed this but Sri pointed it out to me. A sacred, 800+ year old Ginkgo tree fell in Japan in March due to a storm. The tree was so revered that 20,000 people from all over Japan came to pay their respects to the fallen tree. To ensure that the tree’s spirit lives [...]

Biological engineering today is increasingly built on a foundation of standard biological parts that engineers can use to build their systems.  These are the basic subroutines in our programming language. It’s important that the parts that provide core functionality be free of restrictive IP rights and a couple recent developments deserve to be celebrated: (1) [...]

Just a quick pointer to an op-ed in the Globe. Apparently Mayor Menino is interested in transforming Boston’s Seaport District, which Ginkgo calls home, into an innovation zone where young scientists and engineers can live and work, on the cheap. But Menino may be on to something by promoting the waterfront to young scientists and [...]

A few weeks ago, the Globe ran a story on High Tech’s Hand Me Downs. At Ginkgo, we’ve been pretty creative about putting together our lab. Ebay, labs closing up, labs moving, companies shutting down, Dovebid … we’ve tried it all for lab equipment & supplies. So here’s a few tips for those who might [...]

Mayor Menino visited Ginkgo today to formally announce our move to Boston and present us with a $150,000 check from the Lifetech Boston loan program for early stage startups. Barry gave him a tour around our new digs and even showed him a demo of one of our Ginkgo-bots. You can check out coverage by [...]