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For the price of a sports car, you can have a pint of your blood drawn and a month later receive your entire genome—all 6 billion base pairs—encoded in a 1.5-gigabyte data file. That means the price has dropped to 1/50 000 of what it was less than a decade ago (the first genome, after all, cost US $3 billion). Yet the price is expected to fall to 1/1000 of the current price in the next four years. The cultural ramifications of a $100 genome—which is where we’re headed, whether it takes 4 years or 10—are as wide and deep as those of any other recent innovation, including search engines and cellphones.

Andrew Phillips holds the title of Scientist with Microsoft Research Cambridge, and he's working on a method of programming that compiles into DNA. Part of this involves a visual programming language called Stochastic Pi Machine, or SPiM. This system models biological processes to help give researchers feedback on how organisms will react to modifications. The hope is that this can be used to help scientists program for large biological systems using modular components compiled to DNA. Yes, I’m in way over my head here, but I do my best to ask Andrew about the role this will play in medical treatment going forward, what it means to DNA computing, and the ability of back-engineering the genetic code we don’t use now

Researchers at the NanoRobotics Laboratory of the École Polytechnique de Montréal, in Canada, are putting swarms of bacteria to work, using them to perform micro-manipulations and even propel microrobots. Led by Professor Sylvain Martel, the researchers want to use flagellated bacteria to carry drugs into tumors, act as sensing agents for detecting pathogens, and operate micro-factories that could perform pharmacological and genetic tests. They also want to use the bacteria as micro-workers for building things. Things like a tiny step pyramid. The video below shows some 5000 bacteria moving like a swarm of little fish, working together to transport tiny epoxy bricks and assemble a pyramidal structure -- all in 15 minutes. The video was presented at IROS last year, along with a wonderfully titled paper, "A Robotic Micro-Assembly Process Inspired By the Construction of the Ancient Pyramids and Relying on Several Thousands of Flagellated Bacteria Acting as Workers."

Andrew Phillips holds the title of Scientist with Microsoft Research Cambridge, and he's working on a method of programming that compiles into DNA. Part of this involves a visual programming language called Stochastic Pi Machine, or SPiM. This system models biological processes to help give researchers feedback on how organisms will react to modifications. The hope is that this can be used to help scientists program for large biological systems using modular components compiled to DNA. Yes, I’m in way over my head here, but I do my best to ask Andrew about the role this will play in medical treatment going forward, what it means to DNA computing, and the ability of back-engineering the genetic code we don’t use now.

8 janvier, minuit, banlieue de Téhéran, il neige. Quatre jeunes femmes répètent Les Bonnes de Jean Genet dans une maison. Ali, le fiancé de Fati, qui fait son service militaire dans la police, les rejoint. Il n’est pas censé être là, mais Fati a insisté. Bravant la loi qui interdit à un soldat de porter une arme dans un lieu privé, il promet à l’officier de service de revenir au poste avant l’aube. La neige l’en empêche. Abdi a lui aussi rejoint la répétition. Ils sont tous contraints de passer la nuit dans cette maison. Le lendemain quand Ali se réveille, il est seul et son arme a disparu. Mais la maison n’est pas le lieu de l’intrigue, ni l’arme l’enjeu véritable. La pièce tisse une suite de conversations téléphoniques au lendemain de cette nuit. En filigrane, les dialogues évoquent la situation actuelle de jeunes gens en Iran qui cherchent des moyens de se faire entendre. Figure de passeur dans le milieu théâtral iranien, Amir Reza Koohestani, auteur-metteur en scène accueilli en Europe depuis 2002, a récemment contribué, avec Oriza Hirata et Sylvain Maurice, au spectacle Des utopies? Entre symbolisme et réalisme, ne cessant d’échapper aux limites imposées par la censure, il tend au public un miroir de sa société.