November 2009 Archives

While in London last month I sat down for tea and an interview with Geoff Carr at The Economist (permalink).  We covered a lot of ground, though as befitting a brief chat over tea we didn't get too deep in to the weeds.  Alas, they cut out the bit where the good Dr. Carr tried to put milk in my peppermint tea.  A topic for discussion in itself.

I just accepted an invitation to speak at The Economist's World in 2010 Festival in Washington DC on 6 December.  See you there.

Also, I finally got the Biology is Technology site sorted out as a blog.  (Does anybody out there know how to use ActionEvents to stream entries from one blog into another?)  The book is scheduled to come out on 15 February, 2010.  At least that is what Amazon thinks.

I have a short letter in the November 2009 issue of Nature Biotechnology (subscription req.) correcting the record on US revenues from genetically modified crops.  Based on USDA data for corn, soy, and cotton, revenues from the GM versions of those crops were about US$ 65 billion in 2008, rather than the widely misreported ~$4 billion.  The latter figure is in fact just from GM seed revenue.  I would put the total from all GM crops and seeds at $75-85 billion, though it isn't yet clear where GM sugar beets are going to come in.  Assuming US revenues are representative of global averages, then total worldwide revenues are probably north of $150 billion for crops and seeds together.

Below is a figure showing US yearly revenues from the three big crops, as well as the US annual total.  Note that although the GM fraction of each crop continues to grow (see the ISAAA report from 2008), prices fluctuate sufficiently from year to year that total revenues declined from 2007 to 2008.  Food and crop prices have come off their 2007 highs -- which cannot last given increasing demand around the world.  I would expect revenues to resume their climb in 2010.

The Grand Prize winner at iGEM 2009 is Cambridge.  James Brown will be incorrigible for years to come.

(Update:  Here is a surprise for James -- the iGEM judges unanimously agreed that along with the brick goes the permanent honor of buying the first three rounds...)

Late last night, after struggling for many hours, the judges came up with this list, which is now up on the big screen at Kresge Auditorium at MIT.  Talks to commence presently.

iGEM 2009: Finalists

Cambridge
Freiburg Bioware
Groningen
Heildelberg
Imperial College London
Valencia

Stay tuned.

Here are a couple of snaps of the Scatalog from E. chromi, a spin-off of this year's Cambridge University iGEM project.

Cambridge has built a set of parts that allow generation of a rainbow of color pigments in E. coli.  Designers James King and Daisy Ginsberg got creative with the application of all the hues of engineered poo as biosensors for the human GI tract.  It's all nicely packaged up in a shiny briefcase, just you would see any any tech convention.

Bet that was fun coming through airport security.

I am sitting in the Stata Center at MIT taking a breather from serving as a judge at International Genetically Engineered Machines 2009 Jamboree.  There are 110 teams here, with over 1200 students from around the world showing off their projects with great enthusiasm.  As we have a full day left to go before the deliberations begin I won't divulge yet how specific teams are doing.  But I have to say I am pleased.

iGEM is, at its core, an experiment.  As the wiki says, the teams will "all specify, design, build, and test simple biological systems made from standard, interchangeable biological parts."  Of course, as there aren't yet any standard, interchangeable biological parts, the students are inventing as they go.  And inventing is slow, arduous work.

The most impressive talks I have seen this year do not represent giant leaps forward in new biological technologies (though some of the projects are real steps forward in that regard).  Rather, I have been pleasantly surprised that many teams took up the challenge of improving or better characterizing parts that were already in the registry.  Many of those parts don't work as advertized, or do not have enough data in the registry to know how they really work.  That will slowly get fixed.

That it will take time to get all this working can make the differences between the annual Jamborees appear slight.  Thin film semiconductors themselves took decades to get working, and even then those systems were built on top of a good century and a half of practical experience with electricity and then basic electronics.  iGEM is attempting to squeeze all that effort into just a few years.

I am put in mind of W. Brian Arthur's work on the dependence of innovation on the availability of components.  Here is a recent review of his book, The Nature of Technology. Historically, and theoretically, the complexity of technological artefacts tends to increase in leaps and bounds as components are combined in new ways, and then combinations then serve as components for the next generation of innovation.  But first you have to have functioning components. 

Drew Endy asked me yesterday if I thought we were stuck in a rut.  Nope.  Just stuck in reality.