Cambridge, UK




Compiled by Jim Haseloff at the University of Cambridge.
This site contains details of recent papers and activity in Synthetic Biology, with particular emphasis on: (i) development of standards in biology and DNA parts, (ii) microbial and (iii) plant systems, (iv) hardware for scientific computing and instrumentation, (v) tools for scientific productivity and (vi) collected miscellany.
The site also contains details of Synthetic Biology research and teaching at the University of Cambridge, including the annual iGEM team run by Jim Ajioka, Jim Haseloff and Gos Micklem in Cambridge.
The Fourth International Workshop on Bio-Design Automation (IWBDA) at DAC will bring together researchers from the synthetic biology, systems biology, and design automation communities....
The overall goal for the workshop is to bring together scientists working in the highly interdisciplinary field of synthetic biology to present cutting-edge research aligned with three...
GCAT is pleased to announce a synthetic biology faculty workshop for the summer of 2012 (June 20-22) hosted by HHMI’s Science Education Alliance (SEA). The goal of this workshop...
A student and post-doc organised conference: they have invited the world's leading scientists to highlight the recent advances in microbial engineering, along with discussing the challenges...
A week long, professional development class will prepare educators to bring biological engineering and synthetic biology into their classrooms and laboratories. The workshop will include...
Finals for the international Genetically Engineered Machine Competition.
The 2nd CSH Asia Synthetic Biology meeting will be held at the Suzhou Dushu Lake Conference Center in Suzhou, China, located approximately 60 miles west of Shanghai.
(Re-)constructing and Re-programming Life

Scientists in Taiwan discovered that placing gold nanoparticles in plants made them glow, which could turn them into an effective form of nighttime illumination:
By implanting the gold nanoparticles into the leaves of the Bacopa caroliniana plants, the scientists were able to induce the chlorophyll in the leaves to produce a red emission. Under a high wavelength of ultraviolet light, the gold nanoparticles were able to produce a blue-violet fluorescence to trigger a red emission in the surrounding chlorophyll.[...]
‘In the future, bio-LED could be used to make roadside trees luminescent at night. This will save energy and absorb CO2 as the bio-LED luminescence will cause the chloroplast to conduct photosynthesis,’ Dr. Yen-Hsun Su said in an interview with Chemistry World.
Link via Popular Science | Photo (unrelated) by Flickr user Irargerich used under Creative Commons license