DC Synthetic Biology Conference Here Be Dragons

[Joseph Jackson]

All the big names (Endy, Church, etc) in the field plus some cool people like Neal Stephenson and my friend the Science Comedian are at the Here Be Dragons conference happening now.

You can watch the moderators freak out over garage biology and "garagistas" and go all Fanboy for future of biotech LOL: 

Endy:  "Do it Together Success examples in iGEM, but media brands this as do it yourself."  In 3 months they can do what I could not do with a university lab 15 yrs ago.  Is it like starting a PC company in garage circa 1970?  No.  There was infrastructure in place that reflected public investment providing sophisticated tools.  Apple could be started because Texas Instruments had laid the transistor infrastructure.  Today we have abundance of enthusiasm for amateur biology (more exciting platform than computing).  Can this counteract the lack of mature tools?  We'll see.


http://www.newamerica.net/events/2011/here_be_dragons

[L'el]

Great panel, thanks for the link!


On another note, NYTimes today has front page article on death of the
science fair: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/us/05science.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Laurel