News Digest #214 – What can synthetic biologists learn from Zuckerberg’s mistakes?

Hi all,If you are coming to SynBioBeta 2018, don’t forget to book your room in one of our recommended hotels by next Friday to get a discount. Y Combinator’s new Bio Program will kick off this June and the companies will all have access space at Bonneville Labs in Berkeley, founded by Kinkead Reiling. If you haven’t been to Bonneville Labs before, Kinkead will be hosting the closing party for Synthetic Biology Week.

Kat Manalac and Diego Rey of Y Combinator will both be onstage this October at SynBioBeta, along with a number of the new YC companies.Illumina Accelerator is accepting applications for its next funding cycle in San Francisco, which are due on May 1st. And yesterday was Demo Day at IndieBio. Check out our review of the event.

It’s not just biogeeks who care about making biology easier to engineer: DARPA sees a future in intelligent laboratory robots to accelerate biological design. It just awarded $9.5 million to Transcriptic and Ginkgo Bioworks. The industry partners will produce a cloud-based experimental design platform and open data exchange for synthetic biology.

Yvonne Linney, CEO of Transcriptic, and Tom Knight, co-founder of Ginkgo Bioworks.

Last but not least, the biocreatives are in force this week, with Bolt Thread’s launch of a new mushroom leather handbag with Stella McCartney (Bolt is licensing Ecovative’s leather), and Ginkgo’s launch of their three-month creative residency.Regards,John

Synthetic biologists can learn from Zuckerberg’s mistakes

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