February 12, 2010
Synthetic biology doesn’t require cells, and in several ways, cells are liabilities.
Cells can make engineering difficult. Cell membranes and bacterial walls stand between new genes and the machinery needed to transcribe and translate them. They are barriers to liberating gene products. They contain systems that are complex products of eons of evolutionary history, not systems [...]
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February 6, 2010
Atomically precise self-assembly of complex structures can be engineered by providing for multiple binding interactions that
Cooperate to stabilize the correct configuration, in a thermodynamic sense, and
Do not stabilize any other configuration, in a kinetic sense
Roughly speaking, in the correct configuration, the parts fit together to allow all the binding interactions to operate simultaneously, and the [...]
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