Commission holds first public meeting

The Commission held its first public meeting on July 8 and 9. Experts in policy, security, medicine and engineering gave presentations on synthetic biology.
President Obama asked the Commission to study the implications of synthetic biology following the May 20 announcement by the J. Craig Venter Institute that it had inserted a laboratory-made genome into a bacterial cell, creating an organism not found in nature.
This was the first of three Commission meetings on synthetic biology. The next will be held in Philadelphia, Penn., on September 13 and 14.