Let's make biology easy to engineer

Our capacity to partner with biology to make useful things is limited by the tools that we use to specify, design, prototype, test, and analyze natural or engineered living systems. Biology has typically been engaged as a "technology of last resort" in attempts to solve problems that other more mature technologies cannot. As a result we can now only celebrate a few idiosyncratic biotechnology successes. We have not yet developed the scientific foundations and engineering processes needed to sustain geometric increases in our capacity to engineer biology. I'll review recent progress on making biology easier to engineer. Specific examples will include the development of a reliable S/R latch that operates in living cells and the beginnings of a genome-scale cellular operating system.

Speaker: Drew Endy Assistant Professor, Bioengineering Stanford