The 4th Domain

A very short post to say that there is a new paper in PNAS that some might find interesting: Genetic switchboard for synthetic biology applications.

One of the advantages of working with bacteria is that genes can be clustered together under control of a single promoter (known as an operon). Multiple protein products can therefore be generated from a single messenger RNA strand (the mRNA is said to be polycistronic (Fig. 1)).

I am very pleased to say that we have been accepted for participation in iGEM 2012. There’s not much to see yet but you will be able to see how the team progresses over the summer months here.

In addition to David Shukman’s upcoming appearance on BBC R4, he has written an article on the BBC news website on synthetic biology, which will be added to tomorrow.  Find the article here.  Some ‘interesting’ posts in the ‘Your comments’ section at the bottom…

A big thank you to the Wellcome Trust for providing stipends to University of Exeter students to take part in the iGEM competition this year. This makes a huge difference to our ability to enter the competition, allowing the students to work full time on a project of their own devising.

The BBC’s David Shukman reports on Synthetic Biology on the Today program (7:40 time slot).