• May 1, 2012. The Sceptical Chymist this month profiled Dr. Steven Benner, Director of the Westheimer Institute at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution.

• April 30, 2012. New kinds of DNA were first created in the Benner laboratory 20 years ago. Today, these are used in diagnostics, medicine, and nanotechnology. The next phase in synthetic biology was published in Science last week, in a paper coauthored by Philipp Holliger, a former Benner coworker, and John Chaput, who studied with Christopher Switzer, also a former Benner coworker. Their work is covered, in the Los Angeles Times, Popular Mechanics, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and Nature magazine.

• March 7, 2012. Steven Benner will be giving the Capstone Lecture at Pittcon in Orlando on March 14, 2012. Here, he will describe how innovative nucleic acid reagents can help instruments detect DNA sequences in diagnostics tools targeted against infectious diseases, inherited diseases, cancers, and geriatric diseases.

• January 12, 2012. New Scholarship Announced to Honor Frank H. Westheimer. January 15, 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Frank H. Westheimer, a founder of the field of biological chemistry. Today, scientists at The Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology (TWIST) at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution (FfAME) follow his vision to apply chemistry to medicine, genomics, and biotechnology. Accordingly, in honor of Prof. Westheimer's centennial birthday, the Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology, in collaboration with the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, is announcing the first year of a scholarship program to support the advanced education of children of students who have trained with TWIST and FfAME scientists. For more information, contact ljackson@ffame.org.

• August 23, 2011. The Royal Society of Chemistry describes a major new advance made at the FfAME in the area of synthetic biology (see Expanded genetic alphabet could spell out new genes). This advance comes from DTRA-funded work that studies the fundamental science that stands behind the DNA double helix.

• August 12, 2011. Steven Benner will join Arthur Caplan, Director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, to discuss artificial life with Patt Morrison, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist of the NPR affiliate KPCC in Los Angeles. The broadcast will be live on Friday, August 12, 1:30 - 2:00 PM Pacific / 4:30 - 5:00 PM Eastern, and will take listener calls.

• June 17, 2011. Steven Benner gave a plenary talk at the BioBricks meeting in Palo Alto on Friday. The master of the 18 minute talk, Dr. Benner's presentation will be available online in a few weeks. In addition to outlining the current status of synthetic biology at the FfAME, his talk produced the number one tweet among conference attendees who rebroadcasted Benner's aphorism: "Culture is what you think when you are not thinking."

• LiveScience: LiveScience and arsenic-based life
February 1, 2012

• Chemical and Engineering News: More on arsenic-based life
January 23, 2012

• BBC News: Searching for the origins of life... and our future
November 7, 2011

• Odyssey Magazine: The Alien Discovery that Wasn't
June 27, 2011

• Chemical & Engineering News: Arsenic Bacterium Debate Continues
June 6, 2011

• New Scientist: Arsenic-based bacteria: Fact or fiction?
May 27, 2011

• New York Times: A Romp Into Theories of the Cradle of Life
February 21, 2011

• Tech News World: Weird Earthly Life-Form Means Rethinking the Hunt for ET
February 21, 2011

• MSNBC: Definition of life: Arsenic debate just won't die
February 18, 2011

• Yahoo! News: Vatican looks to heavens for signs of alien life
November 10, 2009