Thursday, March 19, 2009

Mutants on demand

A Machine That Speeds Up Evolution





Rather than changing the genome letter by letter, as most genetic engineering is done, George Church and his colleagues have developed a new technology that can make 50 changes to a bacterial genome nearly simultaneously -- an advance that could be used to greatly speed the creation of bacteria that are better at producing drugs, nutrients, or biofuels.

"What once took months now takes days," says Stephen del Cardayré, vice president of research and development at LS9, a biofuels company based in South San Francisco of which Church is a founder.

(Via The Keyhoe Report.)


For when you need that doomsday virus now, damnit.

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