If the field of synthetic biology lives up to its promise, says Harvard Medical School Professor Pamela Silver, cheap, fast genetic sequencing will allow scientists to isolate important functional genes, put them in bacteria engineered to produce and excrete drugs, and then collect the desired product, all for a fraction of the cost of an analogous process today.
Professor Pamela Silver of Harvard Medical School (HMS) believes in biology’s potential to change the world. She sees a future where scientists routinely wield microbes against disease, using computers to turn bacteria into microscopic drug factories rapidly assembled from off-the-shelf biological parts.
View the original article here: Synthetic future: HMS professor leads effort to streamline biological engineering – Phys.Org