Give your mad scientist alter ego a long leash and you could win a free trip to China or the chance to be immortalized in a comic book.
Sci-fi blog io9 is holding a design contest for the best synthetic life form. Here's where that secret stash of Ridley Scott movies and H.G. Wells books will come in handy. Think the world could benefit from a class of bioengineered worker clones with a three-year lifespan, a la Blade Runner? Or a non-psychotic version of biohacked computer Proteus IV, from Demon Seed?
Submit a proposal for a chance to nab an all-expense paid trip to Hong Kong for the Synthetic Biology Conference in October, or see your creation star in a freshly inked comic book. The only catch: proposals must be scientifically plausible.
The deadline to submit your design is August 25. Renowned synthetic biologist Drew Endy, Berkeley evolutionary biologist Michael Eisen and Spore game developer Jason Shankel are among the judges who will be evaluating each entry.
__
See also:__
