There have been a couple interesting papers out recently that, in my mind, point towards where synthetic biology is going.
The first, by Travis and co. from Chris’s lab, combined available genomic data with gene synthesis to make and screen a library of methyl halide transferases. Methyl halide transferases convert S-adenoyl methionine (SAM [...]

One of Ginkgo’s favorite biological engineers - Jeff Tabor, has just published his latest engineered biological system, a bacterial edge detector, in Cell Magazine.

The edge detector is a great example of combining different biological parts (light sensors, cell-to-cell signaling molecules, reporters, and logic gates) to make a complicated engineered biological system.  In the final system, the [...]

Just a quick post to let you know that Cesar from Drew’s lab has released the first version of his BioBrick Studio app for the iPhone on the iTunes Store. It lets you do some basic browsing of BioBrick parts from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts.
It’s pretty cool that Cesar is [...]

In 2003, Tom Knight published a technical report on a standard for physical composition of genetic parts. He called parts that adhered to the standard BioBricks. Tom’s key innovation is to design a standard that enabled any two parts (that adhered to the standard) to be assembled together. All of a sudden, [...]

If you haven’t visited the Registry of Standard Biological Parts lately, you should stop by and take a look. We’ve been helping out in the re-design and re-organization of the parts collection available there. Randy and Meagan are constantly looking to improve the Registry so that it is more useful to iGEM teams [...]

It’s a big day here at Ginkgo.  We’re announcing our first product in partnership with New England Biolabs — a BioBrick™ Assembly Kit designed to make part assembly a snap.
For those of you who aren’t already familiar with BioBrick parts, they are essentially just DNA fragments that encode basic biological functions like promoters, terminators, coding [...]

Randy Rettberg pointed out an op-ed piece in yesterday’s NY Times on How the Internet Got Its Rules.  The piece talks about how the RFC process was critical to paving the way for the Internet.  RFC is an acronymn for “Request for Comments”.  Basically an RFC is memo that documents an idea or way of [...]

Whew! March has been a whirlwind month as evidenced by the lack of activity on the Ginkgo blog.  Barry and I had a great time at Etech.  I even got to make my own wearable electronics t-shirt in a tutorial with Leah Buechley!
Barry and I were blown away by the turn out at our Real [...]

On Oscar weekend, this story seemed appropriate. Ginkgo founder Tom Knight is nominated as one of the top 25 most influential engineers working today by Engineering and Technology Magazine, the trade publication of the Institute of Engineering and Technology. The list includes other engineering luminaries such as Vint Cerf, James Dyson, Julia King, [...]

At Ginkgo, we think that having the right CAD tools will be invaluable in improving our ability to engineer biological systems.  As Tom likes to put, we need “push tools” that will let you put in a proposed design and then tell you all the mistakes you made during the design.  (To hear Tom’s take [...]