PLOS synbio says farewell
PLOS » Synthetic Biology
by Kostas Vavitsas
4y ago
0000-0002-6828-1000   This is the last PLOS synbio post. Since July 2014, when the dedicated community blog on synthetic biology was launched, till the end of December 2019, PLOS synbio was one of the prominent voices in the synthetic biology community. But as PLOS will restructure its blogs, the community blogs will need to discontinue.   I was the community editor of PLOS synbio since early 2017. I enjoyed the experience and I really appreciate the opportunity to share with the community news and views on the field of synthetic biology. I am really proud of the direction the blog has taken ..read more
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The art of storytelling in synthetic biology: an interview with Karl Schmieder
PLOS » Synthetic Biology
by Kostas Vavitsas
4y ago
0000-0002-6828-1000   Synthetic biology is a field full of exciting stories. Communicating these stories to each other and to the general public is often part of the daily routine for a synthetic biologist, regardless of career status and seniority. I asked Karl Schmieder, a seasoned communications and strategy consultant in biotechnology and synthetic biology, how to engage in and improve our storytelling.    Kostas Vavitsas:  How did you enter the science communication business? Karl Schmieder: I was terrible at benchwork but excited about biotechnology. As a university student, I thought I ..read more
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Lessons from Aristotle for Synthetic Biologists
PLOS » Synthetic Biology
by Kostas Vavitsas
4y ago
0000-0002-6828-1000   Guest post by Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher, Patricia Balbon, and Danielle Griffin   Almost a year ago today, MIT Technology Review broke the story of the first CRISPR modified embryos carried to term as part of a controversial experiment at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China by Dr. He Jiankui. All around the world people were confronted with a new reality brought upon by advances in human germline engineering, and they were all informed by a science communication magazine. The article, “Chinese scientists are creating CRISPR babies,” is rife with ..read more
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Event coverage: SynBio Markets 2019
PLOS » Synthetic Biology
by Kostas Vavitsas
4y ago
0000-0002-6828-1000   Guest post by Nicolas Krink   Berlin became for two days the beating heart of synthetic biology, as the who is who of this growing industry met for the first SynBio Markets 2019 event. It was organized by BioMarket Insights and partners like the Max-Planck Network for Synthetic Biology (MaxSynBio), and the German Association for Synthetic Biology (GASB). The selected location of a historic power station has set the atmosphere for what should become the mindset – synthetic biology will become a leading industry. With a mixture of keynote talks, panel and roundtable discuss ..read more
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Strain engineering for a better synbio future: an interview with Andreas Meyer from FGen
PLOS » Synthetic Biology
by Kostas Vavitsas
4y ago
0000-0002-6828-1000   FGen is a synthetic biology startup from Switzerland. The company works as a contract research organization, offering strain development and protein engineering for companies. I had the chance to interview Andreas Meyer, the company’s CEO and co-founder, and ask about his story.   Kostas Vavitsas: How did FGen start? Andreas Meyer: Still in an academic environment at ETH Zurich we had several collaborations with industrial partners and our technology platform. At some point these collaborators preferred us to found a company to make IP issues easier to handle. This was so ..read more
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Science Behind the Scenes: Multiplexed CRISPR and sgRNA Arrays with the Howard Salis Lab
PLOS » Synthetic Biology
by Niko McCarty
4y ago
  Over the last few years, thousands of studies have employed CRISPR/Cas systems to edit, or transcriptionally regulate, individual genetic targets. But a new study has taken CRISPR to soaring heights. CRISPR/Cas is remarkably simple in principle: a protein, usually Cas9, can bind to an RNA molecule, such as a single guide RNA (sgRNA), which has a sequence complementary to a target site in the genome. When the Cas9:sgRNA complex binds to its target site, it cleaves the target DNA. By mutating specific amino acids in Cas9, DNA cleavage activity is abolished, thus converting it into a transcript ..read more
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Reflections on Global Community Biology of the Future: It is Open, Diverse, and Thriving
PLOS » Synthetic Biology
by Kostas Vavitsas
4y ago
0000-0002-6828-1000   In the last few years, the bio-community around the world has its own conference. Justice went to the  Global Community Bio Summit this October, and is kind enough to share his thoughts on the event.   Guest post by Justice T. Walker   Community biology—a  movement that seems to democratize life sciences through access and diversity—has grown over the last decades.  This is reflected in a thriving population of community labs, like Genspace and BioCurious in the US, and Freak Lab in Thailand and Kumasi Hive in Ghana, and Co-Lab in Denmark—to name a few—that are popping up ..read more
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Thoughts and reflections on the 3rd International Conference on Plant Synthetic Biology
PLOS » Synthetic Biology
by Kostas Vavitsas
4y ago
0000-0002-6828-1000   In early October, the 3rd International Conference on Plant Synthetic Biology, Bioengineering, and Biotechnology took place in Cambridge, UK. Ross Cloney was there, and gives us an account mixed with his thoughts on plant synbio!   Guest post by Ross Cloney   What does a synbio world look like? Anyone who has read my previous entries on this blog or if you follow my twitter feed knows I think about what a world with ubiquitous synthetic biology might look like from time to time (in between tweets about my latest homebrewing projects). It was a thought that I pondered duri ..read more
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Science Behind-the-Scenes: CRISPR for Metabolic Engineering with Dr. Raphael Ferreira
PLOS » Synthetic Biology
by Niko McCarty
4y ago
  Yeast, the workhorse of synthetic biology, can convert sugars into chemicals, biofuels, and medicines. Metabolic engineers are constantly developing new tools to program and control S. cerevisiae, tweaking its genome and refactoring proteins to synthesize a milieu of compounds. But yeast – indeed, all life — is complex and intricate, and the specific genes that should be perturbed to increase the production of a compound are often tricky to delineate. Now, in an experimental tour-de-force, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden have combined multiple tools – i ..read more
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Science Behind-the-Scenes: Tethered Ribosomes with Dr. Erik Carlson
PLOS » Synthetic Biology
by Niko McCarty
4y ago
It’s Open Access Week! To celebrate, we are highlighting researchers that opted to publish their work in open access journals, making scientific progress freely available to the world. *** Four billion years ago, a single-celled organism floated in the primordial soups of early earth. This ancient organism already had many of the makings of modern life forms, including a functional ribosome, that nanoscopic machine that makes the thousands of unique proteins that cells require for survival. Two separate ribosomal subunits, the large and the small, come together to decode mRNA messages and buil ..read more
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