Like an ever growing number of Bay Area folks, I drive a Prius. The other day I was thinking why this is. Certainly part of it is doing my bit to at least slow down global warming.
But another big reason is to do my part to wean the U.S. off foreign oil. I’m convinced a big reason we’re in Iraq is that we need the Mideast’s oil. So I’m doing my bit there too.
But as a biologist, could I be doing more? I studied how genes work and tried to come up with medicines that could control genes gone wrong. Is there some way to use this sort of genetics to decrease our dependence on foreign oil? Maybe.
Just look at Craig Venter (or Darth Venter as he’s been called). You may remember him as the upstart in the human genome project who forced it all to be completed sooner than predicted.
Well, now he’s a gene prospector. He spends a lot of his time trolling the oceans for new microbial genes.