地球生命圏科学特論IV

The world today is in a state of enormous transition. In the coming few decades, billions of people will leave poverty and enter the developed world. This unprecedented development will be one of the greatest opportunities ever presented to improve global public health and quality of life, but it will only be realized if it’s done right. The challenge of sustainable energy is not just to provide energy without polluting the atmosphere with fossil carbon, but to do so at a global scale at a cost that everyone can afford. Thanks to capabilities ranging from room temperature and pressure catalysis to self-assembly, biology offers first draft solutions to problems in sustainable energy from the capture and storage of solar power, mining and purifying elements critical for sustainable energy technologies like rare earths, and in carbon sequestration. In these lectures we will discuss my lab's work in building synthetic biology technologies for energy and advanced genetic engineering tools developed by my lab.