The BioBricks Foundation (BBF) is a not-for-profit organization founded by engineers and scientists from MIT, Harvard, and UCSF with significant experience in both non-profit and commercial biotechnology research. BBF encourages the development and responsible use of technologies based on BioBricks, standard DNA parts that encode basic biological functions.
Using BioBricks, a synthetic biologist or biological engineer can already, to some extent, program living organisms in the same way a computer scientist can program a computer. The DNA sequence information and other characteristics of BioBricks are made available to the public free of charge currently via MIT's Registry of Standard Biological Parts.
Any individual or organization is welcome to design, improve, and contribute BioBricks to the Registry. For example, in the summer of 2005, over 150 students and instructors at 13 universities across the world made, shared, and used BioBricks as part of the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition.
