BLOG - microbes

Regulating Synthetic Biology When Its Risks Are Unknown

Melissae Fellet

Regulating Synthetic Biology When Its Risks Are Unknown

The social implications of synthetic biology are unknown, but researchers and social scientists are already thinking of ways to craft fair safety regulations

Hanno Charisius

Synthetic Genes, Synthetic Cells – Synthetic Life

Nature needed about one billion years to create the simplest single-cell organisms that swam around in the primordial soup. Now, scientists are eager to create synthetic life – but better and faster.

Hanno Charisius

On Man and Microbes – Barry Marshall

In the summer of 1984, the Australian scientist Neil Noakes took some bacteria from a petri dish, mixed them with lukewarm beef extract – the normal nutrient solution for bacteria in the lab – and filled a little more than one cup into a beaker. Then he handed this mix to his colleague, the gastroenterologist […]

Martin Fenner

Interview with Edmond Fischer: pianist, microbe hunter, pilot and Napoleon expert

Edmond Fischer shared the 1992 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Edwin Krebs "for their discoveries concerning reversible protein phosphorylation as a biological regulatory mechanism". I had the chance to talk to him in Lindau last week.   My name is Edmond Fischer, but everybody calls me Ed. I’m a retired professor at the University of Washington […]