The term wetware is used to describe the protocols and molecular devices used in

molecular biology Molecular biology is the branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecular basis of biological activity in and between cells, including biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactions. The study of chemical and physi ...

and

synthetic biology Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature. It is a branch of science that encompasses a broad ran ...

. Where biological components and systems are treated in a similar manner to software, and similar development models and methodologies are applied, the term 'wetware' can be used to imply an approach to their problems as 'bugs' and their beneficial aspects as 'features'. In this manner, genetic code can be subjected to

Version Control Systems In software engineering, version control (also known as revision control, source control, or source code management) is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs, documents, large web sites, or other collections o ...

such as

Git Git () is a distributed version control system: tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data inte ...

, for the development of improvements and new gene edits, therapeutic components and therapies.

Examples

The

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

(NSF) funded Wiki project Open Wetware (OWW) provides a resource for reagent, project and laboratory notebook sharing. A somewhat related NSF consortium Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC) constructs and distributes wetware.

References

Molecular biology Synthetic biology {{biology-stub