Posthuman Blues

Splice It Yourself





"Yet it is getting easier to synthesize whole genomes, particularly if your aims aren't sinister. Instead of trying to assemble a viral or bacterial genome yourself, you can order the whole sequence online from Blue Heron Biotechnology, where researchers will first check it for genes in known pathogens and toxins, and then, two to four weeks later, FedEx you the DNA. A few thousand dollars will buy a couple of genes, enough for a simple control circuit; soon it will buy most of a bacterial genome. And your Synthetic Biology@Home project will get easier when microfluidic DNA synthesizers hit the market. These have already been used to write sequences equivalent in size to small bacterial genomes, a capability currently limited to a few academic and industrial labs - but not for much longer."