With this month’s news of a breakthrough in synthetic biology –extending the genetic code – we repeat a special edition of Science Weekly from July 2013, our report from the sixth international meeting on the subject at Imperial College London. Alok Jha met leading researchers to discuss the extraordinary promise and potential problems of this new field of biology.
Alok spoke to Prof Paul Freemont and Professor Richard Kitney, co-directors of the EPSRC Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation at Imperial, as they explained why synthetic biology has become so important for industry in such a short time.