The synthetic biology revolution is now – here’s what that means
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The synthetic biology revolution is now – here's what that means
Claudia Vickers, CSIRO and Ian Small, University of Western Australia
We live in an era where biotechnology, information technology, manufacturing and automation all come together to form a capability called synthetic biology.
Technological revolutions are significant because they shape the future of social and cultural development – as is evident for the industrial revolution, the “green revolution”, and the information technology revolution.
Now synthetic biology is shaping up to be the dominant technology of this century, and Australia has made clear moves to be on board.
Read more: How to grow crops on Mars if we are to live on the red planet
What is synthetic biology?
Synthetic biology is the design and construction of new, standardised biological parts and devices, and getting them to do useful things.
Parts are encoded using DNA and assembled either in a test tube or in living cells – and then applied to ...
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