DARPA Offers $30 Million to Jump-Start Cellular Factories

摘要

For Alicia Jackson and her bosses at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), synthetic biology is still too much of an art form. That's why Jackson, who was trained as a materials scientist and is now a DARPA program manager, is hoping her agency can help scientists get much better at modifying the metabolic and genetic machinery of cells to produce useful products such as fuels. "We want to create a new manufacturing capability for the United States" using living systems, she says. And toward that end, DARPA is about to sponsor a $30 million program called Living Foundries.