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The Dawn of Engineered Biology | Contrary

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Biology is kaleidoscopically complex. We are still far from understanding how all the components, even at the level of a single cell, work together — let alone at the level of an entire organism. For a long time, scientists had to rely on imperfect and limited methods of observation to build an understanding of biology. To the credit of previous generations of biologists, this got us pretty far. We discovered the existence of organelles, genetic material, and many other mechanisms that drive a number of critical biological functions. However, for a long time, it was as though we could only investigate biology from a great distance, like trying to understand the inner workings of an organization by peering through its windows. This all changed with the discovery of CRISPR technologies in 2012, which granted researchers an unprecedented degree of control over genetic material. For the first time, it was possible to not only observe biology, but perturb it, alter it, and even design it. T

Biology is kaleidoscopically complex. We are still far from understanding how all the components, even at the level of a single cell, work together — let alone at the level of an entire organism. For a long time, scientists had to rely on imperfect and limited methods of observation to build an understanding of biology. To the credit of previous generations of biologists, this got us pretty far. We discovered the existence of organelles, genetic material, and many other mechanisms that drive a number of critical biological functions. However, for a long time, it was as though we could only inv

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