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Synthetic Biology and Microsoft

Bio-tech

I did read the book "The impact of Synthetic Biology". Unfortunately, this book is only written in Japanese.

It's about Synthetic Biology, that is to write a genome. The world first Artificial Cell, Minimal Cell was created by Craig Venter [1] and his team by Minimal genome project [2]. How he and his team achieve it. And Gene Drive, Dual use of a science, SafeGenes program by DARPA [3] (= Reseach Institution by US Department of Defense (= DoD)), and etc.

Geek Power: Steven Levy Revisits Tech Titans, Hackers, Idealists | WIRED

Just ask Bill Gates. If he were a teenager today, he says, he’d be hacking biology. “Creating artificial life with DNA synthesis. That’s sort of the equivalent of machine-language programming,” says Gates, whose work for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has led him to develop his own expertise in disease and immunology.

Clearly Microsoft's presence in biology is higher than before. A bio hackathon event held in Cambridge UK I am going to attend, is sponsored by not only bio companies, but also IT companies Microsoft and ARM.

Tom Knight [4] the software engineer who worked for ARPA-NET is now working for Synthetic Biology as a biologist in MIT. In his lab, AI scientist and Randy Rettberg [5] the Sun Microsystems ex-CTO are working.

I feel the biology's presence has been higher day by day.