Writing Genetic Languages
June 17, 2014 | Terry Sharrer
If synthetic biologists can develop a recombinant plant that produces a human protein such as interleukin-2 and fold it to a functional shape, they would have a crop-source of the world’s most valuable substance—millions of times more valuable than gold. But to accomplish such a feat (or anything else on the synthetic biology horizon), the genetic languages of different species have to be “understandable.” To that end, researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA) and M.I.T. have created an open source software, “GenoCAD,” that is an HTML or Java language specifically for synthetic biology. MORE
Image Credit: GenoCAD and Virginia Bioinformatics Institute