Blogging Synthetic Bio

In the latest post at the Omics! Omics! blog, author Keith Robison speaks to the wonders of synthetic biology by pointing out a recent paper published in the online edition of PNAS. A group of biophysicists at UC Berkeley recently constructed a slightly tweaked version of E. coli in an attempt to impart it with the ability to use light to harvest energy. Normally, E. coli doesn't know what to do with light, but this synthetic version, with one gene from another microorganism, can make energy with the right wavelength, according to the blog.