Obama’s ‘Sputnik Moment’

January 28, 2011

Dubbing it our generation’s “Sputnik moment” in his State of the Union Address this week, President Obama called for more research and incentives to help our country break its dependence on oil with biofuels.

Just last month the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues released its report examining the potential risks and benefits of synthetic biology. Synthetic biology is an emerging field of research that relies on chemically synthesized DNA, along with standardized and automatable processes, to create new biochemical systems or organisms with novel or enhanced characteristics. (Bioethics Forum blog)