I'm in Baltimore, where I've been at a training all day (as an observer, not a participant -- it's part of a study I'm doing). I have maybe some half-way serious issues to write about so I want to do it correctly, and I don't have time right now. So, just for the heck of it, here's a weird government funding opportunity I came across. Anybody care to apply? Anybody see any worrisome implications here?
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency: Chronicle of Lineage Indicative of Origins (CLIO). DARPA is seeking innovative research proposals that will reduce biosecurity restriction on genetic engineering and synthetic biology research by ensuring biosafety and biosecurity at the level of the pathogen (rather than a research facility). The CLIO program specifically seeks to enhance biological security and the protection of genomic intellectual property in the global biocommodities community by developing safe and secure systems for encoding non-hereditary events into the genome of viruses and prokaryotes. The funding is intended to establish the technical precedence for the use of genomic, epigenic or biophysical taggant systems to record information and potentially to report on environmental events during research or commercial activites.
Deadline: Abstracts due 4:00PM ET, April 21, 2011; Proposals due 4:00PM ET, May 25, 2011
2 comments:
here is some possibly informed opinion aboit CLIO
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/03/track-changes-for-your-genes-darpa-goal/
Yup, essentially they want to be able to tell when somebody rips off their designer pathogens. That's in the interest of our "national defense," of course.
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