Create GLOWING PLANTS using synthetic biology and Genome Compiler’s software – the first step in creating sustainable natural lighting.
What is Synthetic Biology?
All living organisms contain an instruction set that determines what they look like and what they do. These instructions are encoded in the organisms’s DNA — long and complex strings of molecules embedded in every living cell. This is an organism’s genetic code (or “genome”).
Humans have been altering the genetic code of plants and animals for millennia, by selectively breeding individuals with desirable features. As biotechnologists have learned more about how to read and manipulate this code, they have begun to take genetic information associated with useful features from one organism, and add it into another one. This is the basis of genetic engineering, and has allowed researchers to speed up the process of developing new breeds of plants and animals.
More recently we have learnt how to make new sequences of DNA from scratch. By combining these techniques with the principles of modern engineering, scientists can now use computers and laboratory chemicals to design organisms that do new things.
This is the essence of synthetic biology and it’s potential is tremendous – we can use it to produce cheaper, more efficient biofuels, to excrete the precursors of medical drugs or create new plants which naturally glow.
Check out the project on Kickstarter
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