SynBERC, in partnership with the Joint BioEnergy Institute, was honored to host Dr. Sydney Brenner for a special lunchtime seminar and discussion on the role of synthetic biology in bioenergy production, biosynthetic therapeutics, and other areas of social importance. Dr. Brenner has long been at the leading edge of molecular biology: Among his many notable discoveries are the existence of messenger RNA and the triplet nature of the code of protein translation. With characteristic wit and wisdom - and at times a critical view toward the field of synthetic biology - Dr. Brenner broached a number of themes of concern to the field. For example, an 'old' debate within the synthetic biology community is whether it should emphasize a "bottom-up" approach (i.e., constructing large numbers of well-characterized parts without specific applications in mind) versus a "top-down" approach (constructing parts for specific systems that can hopefully be useful for other applications later). In this, Dr. Brenner championed a "middle-out" approach, wherein a researcher builds out from his or her native level of abstraction. He called this approach a kind of pragmatic reductionism: Reducing things to level that we can develop true causal relationships. Dr. Brenner's current project: Reading the entire human genome from start to finish. (He's done with the first five volumes...er, chromosomes.) You can watch Dr. Brenner's Novermber 13, 2008 seminar online, including his description of biology as "the art of the satisfactory", on the Ars Synthetica website.