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Overview Sensitivity Tuner --- Characterisation --- Modelling Colour Generators --- Carotenoids (Orange/Red) --- Melanin (Brown) --- Violacein (Purple/Green) The Future Safety

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The Future

Synthetic biology is an exciting new area of science, that is rapidly developing and changing. It has the potential for use in a wide variety of areas, and new technologies. We considered these issues throughout the summer, and took part in workshops which explored the potential for our devices in the future.

The Near Future - applications of the sensitivity tuner and colour output

For proof of concept, we attached our sensitivity tuners to the arabinose sensor, however there are so many different sensors in the registry (and in the natural world!) which could benefit from this device. In particular the area of environmental sensing, where we feel our device has the greatest potential for use. The registry already contains sensors for lead, arsinic and other pollutants. The use of the sensitivity tuner would make these sensors able to distinguish more accurately between levels of pollutant, and the pigment output would allow them to be used without expensive equiptment, in places where this may be impractical or too costly. We looked at the potential for this system in helping countries such as Bangladesh, which has severe problems with arsinic pollution, in areas where expensive sensor devices are unavailable.

The Distant Future - potential for colour

In the colours future workshop (organises by Daisy Ginsburg and James King from the Royal College of Art) we concentrated on our various pigments, considering how the ability to use pigments from the natural world might affect the world we live in. We divided these considerations into four main groups:

Products Both bacterial pigments and synthetic biology in general has the potential to be used to create many different products and technologies. Crispian, Alan and Caitlin explored the use of synthetic biology in a range of products from childrens toys to commencial food-colouring. This would create issues of property and patents; if the biobrick for colour is in an open source registry, would this create problems for people hopeing to patent a certain colour, or a gene for a colour? Megan and Mike took this to an extreme with a sketch from a world where the colour orange was patented, and it's use under strict control.

Services Along with new technologies, comes the creation of new services, providing jobs that previously did not exist. Working with synthetic biology tools and products could become an industry in itself, with a unique skill-set. As the design of devices reaches higher levels of abstraction, the concept becomes more available for different industries to use, and provides new ways to consider the workings in biological cells. In view of our colours, we imagined a future where pigments from the natural world were in high demand, creating the job of 'colour-hunter', people looking for the brightest and best colours, from the smallest and most easily reproducible genetic systems.

Groups New technologies and ways of thinking also have a social effect. Products created gaps between the have and have-nots, while changes in social acceptibility

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TODO!

How will this affect our daily lives?

Who will use it and what for?

Where will this technology take us?

We thought long and hard about all of these questions over the summer.