Nottingham University researchers want to program biological cells
It’s been the stuff of science fiction – to create new life from scratch and programme it to do whatever you want. Last year we inched closer to that vision when US biologists produced a functioning cell controlled by man-made DNA. But building cells, or synthetic biology as it’s known, is a painfully slow process. That could now change, because at the beginning of this month came the announcement that UK biologists are teaming up with computer scientists to seriously speed things up. The team at Nottingham University want to make a biological operating system which would allow them to programme living cells to perform different function – just like a computer. Here’s my report for Deutsche Welle Radio’s Spectrum: