This post is about MIT biologist Drew Endy. But first, a spot of news:

Kiwi scientists have bred a herd of "green-top" cows that produce skim milk from the teat.

If you think sex is kinky, wait till you see the alternatives.

Life 2.0:

One of synthetic biology's most radical spirits is Drew Endy. Dr Endy, who works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came to the subject from engineering, not biology. As an engineer, he can recognise a kludge when he sees one. And in his opinion, life is a kludge.

In coming years, Endy says, we'll begin to see the first custom-crafted biomachines: cells that can keep track of how old they are or bacteria engineered to hunt down and kill tumor cells. These "devices" will guard against disease, create new fuels, manufacture chemicals and, in the wrong hands, produce horrific bioweapons. These are still the very early days; scientists do not know how to build such devices right now. They are just beginning to know how to build the tools that would build the biological micromachines.

"Drew just does it and doesn't have a big ego."

One roadblock to synthbio's future is the messed-up patent environment in biotech, where every tiny protein pathway and gene sequence has an owner wanting to get paid.

The bigger fear is that synthetic biology could be the end of us all.

"It's immediately obvious when you encounter a DNA sequence that this is a program, and that you could change it."

"The biological systems that we find in nature are not themselves designed by nature to be easy to understand. And so if I wanted to have biology that I understand, I'd be better off building it myself."

The Implications of Synthetic Biology:

“I like to make things -- that’s what I do.”

"We’re going from looking at the living world as only coming from nature, to a subset of the living world being produced by engineers who design and build hopefully useful living artifacts according to our specifications."

Open Source Biology:

Drew Endy describes three major issues: how to develop biological systems when the basic building blocks have been patented, how to assure the quality of constructed DNA code and how to establish rights to reuse and reengineer new genetic products. He sees a solution in an open-source approach to DNA whereby, just as with open-source software, everyone benefits from sharing information.

Visit his lab, get copies of his papers, ...

Learn about Codon Devices, his startup; I found this odd, in view of the above:

Constructive Biology™ represents a new era - one in which biologists can apply engineering principles to their work. It is made possible by Codon Devices' proprietary, industrial platform that allows the design and construction of genetic sequences quickly, inexpensively, and at virtually unlimited lengths.

Contrast this with The BioBricks Foundation (BBF):

... a not-for-profit organization founded by engineers and scientists from MIT, Harvard, and UCSF with significant experience in both non-profit and commercial biotechnology research. BBF encourages the development and responsible use of technologies based on BioBrick™ standard DNA parts that encode basic biological functions.

Using BioBrick™ standard biological parts, a synthetic biologist or biological engineer can already, to some extent, program living organisms in the same way a computer scientist can program a computer. The DNA sequence information and other characteristics of BioBrick™ standard biological parts are made available to the public free of charge currently via MIT's Registry of Standard Biological Parts.