A group of students at the University of Edinburgh have engineered a bacteria that glows bright green when it comes in contact with the chemicals that leech into the soil from buried explosives. The bacteria could be mixed into a colorless solution, and sprayed over the minefield from the air, showing bright green after a few hours. This would be a great improvement over the current slow, and decidedly dangerous methods of finding mines in existing mine fields. The students who created the bacteria say it is cheap to produce, and harmless to humans and animals, though they didn't mention its effects on local plant life.

The developers explain:

We suggest that the bacteria are dropped from a low flying aircraft which will evenly disperse the bacteria across the expected landmine field. This will allow the ground to be covered in the bacteria which will then respond to any TNT or Nitrites that it discovers in the soil. After darkness, which will give the bacteria enough time to produce the proteins which emit light and EYFP, a plane could then fly over the area once again and mark down the location of any luminescence found in the soil, for further investigation. This will provide a much safer method than having a person in the field detecting the landmines.

The bacteria will be engineered with a "kill switch" will turn off their luminescence after a few hours.

While the developers of the mine sensing bacteria have no plans to commercialize their discovery, they noted that the substance would cost approximately £0.013 per square meter where it is sprayed. So this is could be a fairly low-cost solution too, depending on the size of affected areas.

The bacteria were created for the iGem contest using a technique known as BioBricking. BioBricks are chunks of DNA sequence, each of which has a known function, and can be combined with others. It's like nanoscale biological lego: each piece has a specific function, and when combined with other pieces, the larger unit retains connectivity, so it can then be fitted onto other BioBricks. It's a technique that was developed by MIT in 2003, as a way of providing a library of biological parts, with the long-term goal of producing a synthetic living organism from standard parts.

via University of Edinburgh and iGem

Image of glowing bacteria via Maker Faire.

The BioBeer project will be entered into the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition to be held next month. Each team uses BioBricks, which are basically DNA toolkits, to create new lifeforms that do interesting things. Although the definition of "interesting" seems rather loose - past entrants included bacteria that smell different depending on whether they're growing or not.

The Rice team, several members of which are not old enough to drink, has genetically engineered a yeast so it will produce resveratrol in a two-step process (one gene produces some stuff, another gene makes the stuff into resveratrol). They haven't actually brewed any yet, and there are a whole lot of steps in between now and the day you can toss back a frosty mug of Cancer Destroyer Porter, but at least the team isn't creating something that could wipe out humanity. According the Rice press release:

Their entry last year, a bacterial virus that fought antibiotic resistance, was well-received but finished out of the prize running.

Now we just need some asthma-fighting pizza, or some anti-diabetes pretzels. Image by: a4gpa.

Better beer: college team creating anticancer brew. [Rice University via EurekAlerts!]

The winners in our two categories will get either an all-expenses-paid trip to the kickass Synthetic Biology Conference in Hong Kong this October, or $1000 and a chance to have their creature drawn by a cool comic book artist. Find out more below.

There are two categories in the contest, each with their own prize. The important thing to remember is that this contest is about creating cool new lifeforms that are also, in some way, entertaining. So each entry will be judged for plausibility (i.e. whether it is scientifically justifiable), creativity, usefulness, and entertainment value.

Our esteemed judges include synthetic biologist Drew Endy (MIT), evolutionary biologist and PLoS co-founder Michael Eisen (UC Berkeley), Spore game developer Jason Shankel (EA/Maxis), and biology researcher/io9 "ask a biogeek" columnist Terry Johnson (UC Berkeley).

Category One: BioBricks Lifeform
Using the BioBricks registry of standard biological parts, propose a lifeform design that you could conceivably create in a lab. Must include a complete description of how you would make the lifeform, what it would do, and what possible hazards might be involved in creating it. You may design this creature with a team, but only one of you can claim the prize. You may enter lifeforms that you have entered in other contests, but you must state in your entry which contest(s) you've already entered. Your entry should be in the form of a short scientific paper (no more than 3000 words), with illustrations. More points given if you've actually got a working organism.
Prize: All travel and hotel expenses paid trip to the Synthetic Biology Conference in Hong Kong in October, as well as the chance to present your research there.

Category Two: General Synthetic Lifeform
This lifeform can be more creative. Propose a scientifically justifiable lifeform, which could conceivably be created using current technology. Explain how you would create it, what it would do, and hazards involved. Unlike the BioBricks lifeform, this lifeform can be more speculative. It should be science fictional, but must remain scientifically plausible. Your entry should be less than 3,000 words, please. Illustrations and diagrams are a good idea.
Prize: $1000, plus a cool comic book artist will draw your lifeform and you'll get a signed copy of the original art.

DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS AUGUST 25 AT MIDNIGHT PST.

General Rules

1. Send queries and completed entries to madscience@io9.com.
2. On entries, please include your full name, an email and phone number where we can reach you, plus any information about other contests you may have entered your lifeform in.
3. Winners will be announced September 8.
4. All general Gawker contest rules apply.

Registry of Standard Biological Parts [a wiki]. Start with the tutorial, just to get a flavor of what it means to take standard biological parts from a registry and put them together into a new organism. It's actually a lot simpler than you might think. This parts registry is a tool repository, but also a repository of information about biological parts that people have standarized, codified, and registered. A "part" isn't something like an arm — it's going to be something small, like an enzyme that affects a gene, or a protein that causes a particular biological state. Or perhaps a gene that will make you grow an arm.

Open Wetware Project [a community]. This is a clearinghouse community site for academics, students, and the public to share information about synthetic biology and biological engineering projects. You'll find classes, tutorials, and massive lists of laboratories working on biohacking. It's a great place to poke around and find out what people are really doing to create new life forms — and what their motivations are. Also, if you've got your own project or want to know more about an ongoing project, this the place to go to share ideas.

Programming DNA [a lecture] As we've mentioned before, MIT professor Drew Endy gave a smashing and fun introductory lecture about biohacking a couple of months ago at the Chaos Computer Congress in Berlin. If you want a crash course in how hacking a biological system can be like hacking a machine, load this one into your portable media device of choice and watch it during your commute (but only if you're not driving).

BioBricks Foundation [a standards body]. This is a non-profit formed by people from Harvard, MIT and UCSF in order to create standards for what counts as a "biological part." They're tackling legal and ethical issues, as well as strongly supporting the idea of making all information about biological parts and synthetic biology available for free to the public.

Open Biohacking Kit [via Sourceforge]. Get started on your biohacking project with this free software package. From the Sourceforge description:

This open, free synthetic biology kit contains all sorts of information from across the web on how to do it: how to extract and amplify DNA, cloning techniques, making DNA by what's known as oligonucleotides, and all sorts of other tutorials and documents on techniques in genetic engineering, tissue engineering, synbio (synthetic biology), stem cell research, SCNT, evolutionary engineering, bioinformatics, etc.

Image above is of a creature created with Maxis' forthcoming game Spore.