Source: New York Times
Date: January 17, 2006
Summary:
There are bacteria that blink on and off like Christmas tree lights and bacteria that form multicolored patterns of concentric circles resembling an archery target. Yet others can reproduce photographic images. While much of the early work has consisted of eye-catching, if useless, stunts like the blinking bacteria, the emerging field could one day have a major impact on medicine and industry. For instance, Christina D. Smolke, an assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology, is trying to develop circuits of biological parts to sit in the body's cells and guard against cancer. If they detected a cancer-causing mechanism had been activated, they would switch on a gene to have the cell self-destruct.
