Now that Ireland finally has a large-scale effort in systems biology underway, maybe it's time to establish a small-scale effort in building genetically engineered machines.
The MIT-hosted International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM) for students is now in its seventh year - the final jamboree kicks off at Cambridge, Mass., on 30 Oct. However, an Irish team has yet to pull on the green jersey and splice some DNA for the nation - or, ahem, fiddle about with biobrick components for the nation.
Synthetic biology - is it lego for genetic engineers or biology's final frontier? Who knows? But the competition is one good way to get undergraduate students thinking along interdisciplinary lines, as their professors would have it; or thinking along biological hacker lines, as they would have it. Which is, of course, a whole other can of worms.
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