Reprogramming Life: The Emergence of Synthetic Biology

Synthetic biology is bringing together engineers and biologists to design and construct biological circuits out of proteins, genes and other bits of DNA, and to use these circuits to rewire and reprogram organisms. These re-engineered organisms are going to change our lives in the coming years, leading to cheaper drugs, "green" means to fuel our car and clean our environment, and targeted therapies to attack "superbugs" and diseases such as cancer. In this talk, we highlight recent efforts to create synthetic gene networks and programmable cells, and discuss a variety of synthetic biology applications in biocomputing, biotechnology and biomedicine.