Secretary of Synthetic Biology

Barack Obama picks Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy, promising a new focus on synthetic biology and innovative energy solutions.

Written byCarl Zimmer
| 1 min read
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Barack Obama has picked Steven Chu, director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at Berkeley as his Secretary of Energy. This will be interesting--what happens when you put a Nobel-prize winning scientist in charge of a government department? Here's one prediction: expect a lot of synthetic biology. Practically nobody has heard of synthetic biology today, but that will probably change.

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