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  • Using a computer-aided design tool, researchers at Virginia Tech and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created genetic languages to handle the design of biological systems. #-Link-Snipped-# is an open-source software developed at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech. It helps biologists obtain biological rules to bring about organisms to create useful products or health-care solutions from cheap, renewable resources.

    GenoCAD will help to design of protein expression vectors, artificial gene networks, and other genetic constructs. Synthetic biologists have a large library of naturally resulting and synthetic parts to design and build different living systems. These parts are a segment of a DNA language and this language also consist of a set of design rules or "grammar" which govern the language. To allow scientists to generate a wide range of constructs, the parts have to be expressive. But they should also be focused enough to limit the odds of designing flawed constructs.

    GenoCAD ​

    Jean Peccoud, the principal investigator of the GenoCAD project compared software applications and biological applications said that just like software applications require different languages such as HTML, SQL or JAVA similarly synthetic biologists also require different languages for different biological applications. He added that they intended GenoCAD to work as a framework which will allow users to gain expertise in a particular domain in languages they are comfortable in.

    As the number and complexity of components engineered by synthetic biologists increases, researchers are capturing present knowledge by defining some norms. They suggested that generating grammars should be the first step to standardize a wide range of genetic parts which could be combined to develop advanced products. Oliver Purcell, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer in MIT said that developing a grammar in GenoCAD is similar to the process of writing a review paper, you start with the headings and you dig deeper-and-deeper into the details.

    The researchers hope that this type of portal will help in the collaboration of work across disciplines and institutions to grow a team approach to the pressing scientific challenges present.

    Source: #-Link-Snipped-#
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  • K Naraian

    Member • Mar 14, 2014

    Synthetic Bio Systems are very Harmful to Human Body. Once if it is introduced into Healthcare Sector, It is going to be very difficult to control, under open licencing. Now we are already facing the catastrophes of artificial synthetic materials, being used in beauty industry and perfumes, etc. I would say, not to go for it for a better healthy future.
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  • Joseph Christie

    Member • Mar 16, 2014

    Mr. Naraian Your statement. "Once if it is introduced into Healthcare Sector, It is going to be very difficult to control, under open licencing" reads like the Henry Frankenstein story. Can you cite specific examples of the catastrophes of artificial synthetic materials etx etc, The DNA materials are all based on A, T, G, C, the natural polynucleotides and I fail to see how they can be harmful like the so called "artificial materials"
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  • feltra

    Member • Mar 16, 2014

    K Naraian
    Synthetic Bio Systems are very Harmful to Human Body. Once if it is introduced into Healthcare Sector, It is going to be very difficult to control, under open licencing. Now we are already facing the catastrophes of artificial synthetic materials, being used in beauty industry and perfumes, etc. I would say, not to go for it for a better healthy future.
    Whether one likes or not, so-called synthetic biology is going to be the way of the future. It will be "wanted" for by oridinary people - when they see (several years or decades down the road) that synthetic body parts could relieve them from hosts of current medical problems. I will give you just one - visualize tiny nanobots remaining in the bloodstream and whose function is to "clean up" the cholesterol accumulation in the arteries. And if you think it is fantasy, there are already tiny cameras which you swallow as capsules and which trasmit images - which are used to detect possible cancer patterns or stages.
    It is a VERY exciting field and I for one am REALLY GLAD that there is now an open source platform - the only thing i would feel queasy about all this is if it gets cornered by profit-only oriented capitalist/political axis...
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  • Joseph Christie

    Member • Mar 21, 2014

    Synthetic Biology isn't so simple as it sounds. It is the break through technology by which a variety of useful materials like Food flavorings (orange, pineapple, pear, banana), cosmetics, fragrances, can be made via genetically engineered microorganisms. A biotechnology company, Amyris in USA is using synthetic biology, and traditional chemical manufacturing to address some of our planet’s most daunting problems. Biofene, Amyris’s brand of a long-chain, branched hydrocarbon molecule called farnesene , forms the basis for a wide range of products varying from specialty products such as cosmetics, perfumes, detergents and industrial lubricants, to transportation fuels such as diesel and jet fuel. We have barely scratched the surface of this technology, which is essentially genetic engineering of DNA.
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