The New York Times is running a long piece on one team's efforts in the 2009 International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition at MIT:

With seed money from the National Science Foundation (NSF), SynBERC bioengineers from the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University are ramping up efforts to characterize the thousands of control elements critical to the engineering of microbes, so that eventually researchers can mix and match these "DNA parts" in synthetic organisms to produce new drugs, fuels or chemicals.

SynBERC’s Program Director, Sohi Rastegar, appeared on the Kojo Nnamdi Show on a segment focused on synthetic biology. Dr. Rastegar explained the nature of synthetic biology, especially in comparison to natural biology, and talked about SynBERC’s flagship role in NSF’s effort to advance synthetic biology. A short but frank and civil discussion took place regarding the security and safety issues that novel biological systems pose. Appearing with Dr.

July 26, 2009: Synthetic biology portends big changes in our lives by ushering in a dizzying array of applications in everything from medicine to biofuels, environmental remediation to agriculture. Though many of these applications haven’t yet come on line, researchers are hard at work to synthesize new drugs and devices made from genetic parts.

May 26, 2009 —The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) selected SynBERC Director Jay Keasling as the honoree for the first annual Biotech Humanitarian Award. Keasling was selected not only for his professional accomplishments to date, but also for the promise and potential that his research holds. Dr. Keasling was presented the Award during a keynote luncheon held at the 2009 BIO International Convention in Atlanta, GA. He was presented with a $10,000 award to help support his work.

Lead author and newly graduated SynBERC PhD student Reshma Shetty has achieved "highly-accessed" status in the Journal of Biological Engineering for her April 14 paper, "Engineering BioBrick vectors from Biobrick parts". In the paper, Shetty describes applying the advantages of BioBrick standard biological parts to make many new and standardized plasmid-based vectors. Plasmids are small circular segments of DNA found naturally in microbes.

In the March 14 2008 issue of Science, a team of UC San Francisco scientists led by SynBERC Deputy Director Wendell Lim show how a toolkit of modular molecular components and circuit boards can be used to engineer a wide variety of biochemical circuits in living cells, much as the old Heathkit electronic kits of the 1950s enabled students and hobbyists to assemble modular electronic parts into working radios and computers.

The first blockbuster drug produced via synthetic biology principles is about to go into large-scale production, offering hope for an affordable treatment to the 500 million people in the world who suffer from malaria.

SynBERC students from UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley were among the finalists in this year's International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) Competition, sponsored by SynBERC and hosted at MIT. Of the 57 teams from universities around the world, UCSF and UCB were selected as two of only 6 finalists.

SynBERCer and "alpha synthusiast" Drew Endy has accepted a faculty position at Stanford's bioengineering department, set up in 2002. Endy is the first professor hired there who focuses on synthetic biology. The Stanford job will bring Endy back to the Bay Area after five and a half years at MIT. (Bound in part by SynBERC, the Bay Area and Boston are the two largest U.S.