Bell Labs Wasn't Built in a Day. Or Two Years.

Rome is famous for persisting for centuries - and having not been built in a day. If you go there, then one of the most magnificent sites is the most famous sporting arena in the world, the Flavian Amphitheater - better known as the Coliseum. Last week there was colossal news in the biotech world that Arena Bioworks was shutting down, after only two years and $100M spent of its "committed' half billion in funding.  What went wrong?

Nineteen

If I had been more atop things, I would have written this just under a week ago, on the nineteenth anniversary of my starting to write in this space.  That's a milestone, and actually writing something is the way to try to push back towards some regular frequency in posting here.  But the real reason for the title is something I've mused on a small bit for many of those years: can we shave one amino acid out of the proteome?