Three leading German research organizations have outlined how they think the country could play a major part in synthetic biology.rnThe DFG (which funds university research), the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the German Academy of Science and Engineering argue in a 27 July report that synthetic biology has great value to society - as long as the field's expansion is balanced with ethical debate.rnGermany is particularly sensitive to ethical issues in the life sciences, partly because of previous Nazi abuses of bioscience. The report says that a national centre should be created to host a database of information about newly created stretches of DNA, and to assess their safety.
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