I thought that this was good enough to include in these virtual annals.
Although this is a natural extension of the Human Genome Project, something that I figured about a decade-and-a-half ago would happen, it is amazing nonetheless.
A brief couple paragraphs from the full article.
"I see a cell as a chassis and power supply for the artificial systems we are putting together," said Tom Knight of MIT, who likes to compare the state of cell biology today to that of mechanical engineering in 1864. That is when the United States began to adopt standardized thread sizes for nuts and bolts, an advance that allowed the construction of complex devices from simple, interchangeable parts.
If biology is to morph into an engineering discipline, it is going to need similarly standardized parts, Knight said. So he and colleagues have started a collection of hundreds of interchangeable genetic components they call BioBricks, which students and others are already popping into cells like Lego pieces.
Keep in mind: From here on out the progress being made isn't arithmetic in nature, rather it is a geometric progression: In other words, instead of "1, 2, 3, 4..." so on and so forth, it is more akin to "1, 2, 4, 16..."
History in the making, right in front of our eyes!
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