Aliens, Computers & Engineering Biology - An Introduction to Synthetic Biology

Synthesis and assembly of DNA powerfully enables reverse genetics-based approaches to scientific discovery. I'll present recent and unpublished work on genome refactoring and redesign, focusing on identification of cryptic genetic elements and genome decompression. Next, I'll summarize work published over the past year in which we reported the first non-volatile and rewritable digital genetic data storage systems, amplifying genetic logic gates, and programmed cell-cell communication via arbitrary DNA messages. These experiences will be used to frame ten years of research in synthetic biology, by which the foundational engineering ideas of abstraction and standardization have finally been shown as not impossible to make true, and that when made true enable our designer DNA systems to work reliably the first time.