BIOWEAPONS

• What are our project's key vulnerabilities? That is, in what ways is our replicon system susceptible to weaponisation and ill-purpose?
• Are there cases of synthetic biology being hijacked by malevolent forces in the first, that we might better insulate our project against such activities?
• We could include a history of bioweaponry and their use, from before their outlawing at the 1975 Asilomar conference, to modern day use, illegal by international standards, in Syria.
• To the end of better understanding the threat our work could possess, we have attempted to contact a friend of Will's at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory , who transform discoveries in the fields of science and technology into functional defence and security material. We are awaiting a reply.

FUTUREPROOFING SYNBIO

Synthetic biology is a new frontier in science. It is regulated by governments, but having been around for less time, may well have been subject to less meticulous scrutiny by all interested parties. An interesting exercise would be creating a slider of sorts, which dictates how stringently an imagined government controls the investigation of synthetic biology. Too little, and you run into issues of bioterrorism and accidental environmental contamination; too much, and you run the risk of stifling all research in a web of beauracratic frustration. Futureprooding would be about examining different existing models of regulation, deciding where they fit on the scale, and examining these case studies to determine the most effective solution, so as to support and not suffocate a burgeoning and potentially revolutionary field of scientific investigation.