Bits and pieces come to life

摘要

With a box of Lego, you can create a whole range of different structures. Snap together pieces of various colours, shapes and sizes to create a multitude of structures - a house, a boat, a tower - with different functions. In the world of biology, a growing group of scientists is thinking about parts of cells in much the same way.Engineers are using genes and proteins as building blocks to create new kinds of cell and new functions for cells. If scientists can build genes from scratch, they can create organisms with new traits. They can create bacteria that can clean up oil spills, rice with genes that keep the plant infection-free, or cells that can churn out new materials.