Genesis Machines: Engineering Life?

The next generation of computers is coming - and it's nothing like you've ever seen before. After nanotechnology, biocomputing is the next big science idea to have captured the imagination of the media and public.

Scientists are turning away from using silicon chips towards using real, wet, squishy, perhaps even living biology to build machines that could change the world forever. Very soon, we might be able to take cells from cancer patients and programme them to be able to detect disease, and to make clothes woven with microchips and nanofibres to form wearable bio-weapons detection systems.

What are the implications for how we think about computing, and about life itself?

Speakers include Dr Martyn Amos, senior lecturer in the Department of Computing at Mathematics at Manchester Metropolitan University and author of Genesis Machines, Oliver Morton, news editor of Nature, Stephen Emmott, Director of the Microsoft Research European Science Programme in Cambridge.

The discussion is chaired by Vivienne Parry, broadcaster and author of The Truth about Hormones.