20n new biotech company has developed software to create genetically modified microbes, producing more organic way chemicals that would otherwise be produced by complex industrial processes, writes Motherboard wrote "Focus." The company, which began operations in February this year, is co-founded by prof. Christopher Anderson of the University of California at Berkeley and Postdoctoral Saurabh Srivastava and has received funding from several contract with the Agency for advanced research projects in the Defense Agency (DARPA). The technology is based on a computer-based biochemical model for the simulation of the behavior of the cells with the addition of foreign DNA.
"There are many DNA fragments of all kinds in the world and the ability to say what will happen if you add is unprecedented," says Srivastava. "Molecules that our software created organisms produce are not limited to naturally occurring molecules."
To explain the engineering of microbes, 20n makes an analogy with yeast, producing alcohol in brewing. The first successful application of the software is a bacterium that produces paracetamol - an active ingredient of a number of medications. "Our program provide that the addition of a single gene of the most common mushroom meal purchased from the vegetable store, will enable the bacterium E. Coli produce often used protivobolkovo medicine," says Srivastava. "When we tried, get".
