Wandering out into the lobby, I found Paul Rabinow and Oliver Morton chatting about the future of DNA synthesis companies.  Oliver is blogging the meeting at his site Mainly Martian.

Earlier I mentioned the new flavor of money at this meeting and the presence of competing DNA synthesis companies.  Oliver is hot onto the story that these companies are already struggling with the fact that large scale synthesis is becoming commoditized, and they may not all be around for long.  (By the way, we are wondering why John Mulligan, founder of Blue Heron and an early entrant into the commercial synthesis game, isn't at the meeting.  His is a conspicuous absence. (UPDATE:  John Mulligan was on a camping trip and is apparently on his way here now.  But we still missed him yesterday.))  It seems like there is already quite a lot of pressure for desktop DNA synthesizers.

David Baltimore is speaking now about engineering the immune system, which I should tune into.