This thing is great. A biotech company, Ginkgo Bioworks, put out this ad that doesn't really tell you much about the company, but parodies a lot of genetic engineering tropes in 50s style. The company has some interesting projects going, including developing a strain of E. Coli that will produce liquid fuels from electricity and carbon dioxide. More alarming, at least at first, is the BioBrick Assembly Kit, which are "DNA sequences that encode a defined biological function and can be readily assembled with any other BioBrick part." You can actually buy BioBricks via Ginkgo's partner, NEB, for $235 a pop. So, start saving your pennies, you mad-scientist-wannabes.
Video: Meet Ginkgo Bioworks!
Here's the story about the video from io9.com.
