Can’t get enough CRISPR? Nature writer Heidi Ledford’s feature on the possible ethical and legal problems lurking in the transformative gene editing technology led off a special Nature section earlier this month. Then there was Andrew Pollack’s profile of Jennifer Doudna, University of California, Berkeley. But if you want to know what Doudna is really up to now, make sure you’re in San Diego Tuesday, December 15, for the ASCB Annual Meeting symposium, “Bending Nature to Our Purposes: Engineering of Cells and Tissues.” Doudna will be joined by Kristi Anseth, University of Colorado, Boulder/HHMI, as well as Angela Belcher, Koch Institute, MIT. All three will try to make your head (and your science) spin. Belcher is a biomaterials engineer who, for example, is using viruses and other biological agents to enhance lithium batteries. Anseth works at the intersection of chemistry, engineering, and biology on the “rational design of biomaterials.” Think of liquid precursors of polymers that can be injected into the body, triggered by light to photopolymerize as scaffoldings for three-dimensional matrix on which to grow new tissues and even organs.
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