Don’t Shut the Door on the Synthetic Biology Debate

May 9, 2014

(The Guardian) – The Inter-Academy Panel, a network of the world’s science academies including our own Royal Society, today issued a statement on synthetic biology. A few years ago, biologists in the higher branches of the Royal Society would claim that SynBio didn’t merit attention – it was seen as either rebranded molecular biology or messy, dysfunctional engineering. Now, these institutions have woken up to its novelty not because of the science, but because of a set of concerns about regulation. The journal nature has seen fit to grant it a special issue this week.