Talk:CH391L/S13/Metagenomics & Bioprospecting

• Gabriel Wu 18:03, 18 February 2013 (EST): We've talked a lot about DNA synthesis. I don't know if we need an entire talk on sequencing technologies (we certainly could, but may be beyond the scope), but, if anyone needs a little primer on it. It's a little dated, but still relevant on the fundamentals [1].

Metabolic Engineering

• Gabriel Wu 18:22, 18 February 2013 (EST): The story of taxol is interesting and important. Unfortunately, it hasn't been as successful at commercialization--at least not yet. Another rather impressive story that so far has been more successful is that of the antimalarial artemisinin. By expressing plant genes in yeast, researchers are able to economically produce large amounts artemisinin precursor. The most recent publication in this field is here. An older, but clearer explanation is here.

Human Microbiome Project (HMP)

• Gabriel Wu 17:43, 18 February 2013 (EST): The first major paper release of the Human Microbiome Project (HMP) has been published. There were two big papers in Nature in June, 2012 1, 2. These papers accompanied a coordinated release of about a dozen papers in various PLoS journals [2].