Nick Seeber's blog

The Registry of Standard Biological Parts

This is the reductionist approach to cell biology, par excellence. I'm looking forward to going into the detail of this site, if I can recall some of my undergraduate cell biology and biochemistry!

The Registry is a collection of ~3200 genetic parts that can be mixed and matched to build synthetic biology devices and systems. Founded in 2003 at MIT, the Registry is part of the Synthetic Biology community's efforts to make biology easier to engineer. It provides a resource of available genetic parts to iGEM teams and academic labs.

via partsregistry.org

High Speed Robotic Hand in action

I've just been watching a demo reel of the High Speed Robotic Hand being developed by the Ishikawa Komuro Lab. It features a super-quick robotic hand doing all sorts of object manipulation - bouncing a ping-pong ball, twirling sticks, throwing and catching, and picking up a grain of rice with tweezers:

Whilst I've seen most of these videos before individually, it's great to see them compiled into one set. Until you see this stuff in acton you won't believe it's real technology.