Darwin, Dawkins and the Left

By Ken MacLeod - Genomics Forum Writer in Residence

A few months ago Chris Williams, an OU history lecturer and political activist whom I've known for years online, asked me to give this year's Darwin Memorial Lecture to the Leicester Secular Society. I suggested the topic because, a couple of years earlier, I'd put together a stash of notes and links for a blog post that I'd never quite got around to writing.

The event, at the Society's splendid Victorian red-brick Secular Hall on 13 February 2011, drew a large and lively audience, from that cross-section of radical England that you so often find in its socialist, secularist and peace movements. Their searching and informed questions often had me thinking fast on my feet.

Here's the gist of what I said - a longer version will no doubt appear on my own blog.

Show Time! ESRC Genomics Forum/Traverse Theatre Resident Playwright 2011

By Alison Caldecott - Genomics Forum Press and Communications Officer

My initial reaction to the idea that the subject of genomics can inspire creative works was, I must admit, one of skepticism.  But that was before I took on my new role as communications officer for the Genomics Forum.  Before I had been introduced to the Fourm writers in residence - Ken MacLeod and Pippa Goldschmidt and had a chance to relish a collection of genomics short stories by writers who had let their imaginations go wild on the bizarre sounding Zipper, Mad/Max, Hip/Hop, and Disheveled Zinc Finger genes.

Now that I have inherited a successful poetry competition attracting entries from across the globe, and learnt about the Forums visual artist in residence Alistair Gentry and designers Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg and James King, the enthusiastic ambition of the Forum to work with a playwright seems entirely reasonable. And one that on past experience is likely to deliver some exceptional outputs.

Bright Ideas on the HFE Act 2008

I’ve been lucky this January to have a visit here at the Forum from friend and colleague Dr Malcolm Smith, currently a Claims Manager within the Legal Services Department of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. Malcolm completed his PhD last year on the issue of ‘saviour siblings’ at Queensland University of Technology, and will be returning to Brisbane in just a few months’ time (floods permitting!) to take up a lectureship in Law. In the meantime he’s taken the opportunity to visit us here in Edinburgh as part of the Forum’s Bright Ideas Programme.

One of the main activities during Malcolm’s visit has been a workshop we co-organised on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008, which took place at the Forum on 20 January. This followed two other events on the HFE Act which I’ve organised in my time at the Forum – the first a major ‘retrospective’ on the policymaking process leading to the Act (London, March 2009), and the second a smaller workshop at the EGN Conference in Cardiff (October 2009).

Judging at the iGEM Jjamboree

As well spending a few weeks at Arizona State University, my State-side travels this autumn included a trip to Boston for the 2010 iGEM Jamboree. iGEM is a global undergraduate competition in synthetic biology that culminates with a ‘Jamboree’ at MIT every November. The goal for teams entering this competition is to design, build and characterize new genetic circuits that carry out specified functions. To do this, teams must use ‘BioBricks’ from MIT’s Registry of Standard Biological Parts, and must in turn contribute new, characterized biological parts to this open-source community repository.

A Townhall Meeting in the Global Townhall

After a successful ESRC Genomics Network conference in Pairs, Prof Steve Yearley, Genomics Forum blogs on the Closing debate – How to Deliver the promise: Where to next?

The closing session of the conference was advertised as a townhall-style meeting, based on the US tradition of public meetings in which politicians and other public figures have to answer to remarks from the floor with no prior warning and no scripted questions. In the US these meetings conjure up the idea of a politician with their jacket off, sleeves rolled up, engaging ferociously with the audience.

Instead of President Obama or the Tea Party, we had four of our own public figures: Dr Gerardo Jiménez-Sánchez, chair of the OECD’s Working Party on Biotechnology; Rick Johnson, CEO of Global Helix LLC from the USA and a key figure in the Business and Industry Advisory Committee to OECD; Prof Joyce Tait, Scientific Advisor to Innogen; and Prof John Dupre, Director of Egenis. The session was energetically chaired by the OECD’s Iain Gillespie and, in true townhall style, there was no shortage of comments from the audience and some real clashes between speakers’ views.

Clear skies, cacti and collaborations

I’m back in blustery Edinburgh after a 3-week visit to the Center for Nanotechnology in Society (CNS) at Arizona State University -- and what an excellent sojourn it was. (Thanks everyone!) The idea for this trip first came about at the 4S conference dinner last year when Jane Calvert and I bumped into our old Edinburgh colleague Matt Harsh, who is now a researcher at CNS. In swapping news and research ideas, it seemed to us that there were several points of overlap between our respective centres. So we applied for a small ESRC–SSRC grant to support a visit to CNS, and fortunately received funding to cross the pond this October.

The problem with "heritability"

by David Shenk - Genomics Forum Visiting Fellow August 2010

I want to extend my deep appreciation to the Genomics Forum for hosting me as a visiting fellow in August. In my all-too-brief stay, I interacted with some great minds, and was very much impressed with the Forum's mission to improve the understanding of genetics among the general public. My work in my recent book The Genius in All of Us nicely intersects with that mission.

At the Forum, I was very glad to spend some time with Dr. Wendy Johnson from the University of Edinburgh's Department of Psychology. Dr. Johnson has written some of the most articulate work I've come across about the meaning and limitations of so-called "heritability" studies on intelligence.