As global governments meet to discuss synthetic biology (synbio) at the Convention on Biological Diversity meeting (COP12) in South Korea, Friends of the Earth is calling for a moratorium on the commercial release of synthetically modified organisms (SMOs) until a...
In April 2013, a group of ‘bio-hackers’ from California used the social media fund-raising website Kickstarter to raise almost half a million dollars to commercialise a synthetic biology plant that glows in the dark. In exchange for seed funding the ‘glowing plant...
Human inaction on climate change has led to some crazy ideas and suggestions − most notably geoengineering − the large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment to counteract climate change. Geoengineering ideas include seeding blooms of ocean algae with iron...
Scientists have discovered that carbon nanotubes can boost plant growth if they are treated to be more soluble and are absorbed by plants. One research group has even produced ‘bionic plants’ by inserting carbon nanotubes into plant chloroplasts, suggesting that this...
Life on Earth has relied on four DNA subunits – G, T, A and C – for billions of years. However, US scientists have now created two new letters of the DNA alphabet ‘X’ and ‘Y’, encoded into living, breathing – and dividing – E. coli cells. Lead researcher Floyd...