The International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM) draws hundreds of experiments made from basic biology toolkits from undergraduates all over the world.

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But that has changed in a flurry of basic biology findings.

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Harvard Professor Mark Fishman , who will leave his academic perch to run Novartis' Cambridge-based laboratory, believes that in the future most biological research will be possible both in drug companies and in academia, but some sliver of basic biology will still need to be done solely in academia.

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This has been the problem with the war on cancer all along, is that we've mainly been supporting basic biology research and while that's fine and good for biology, what we really need is an aggressive campaign against the causes of cancer, against things like tobacco, against things like asbestos.

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Researchers have unravelled much of the basic molecular biology of cancer and, aided by the outpouring of knowledge that the Human Genome Project has yielded over the past ten years, they have come to understand how the disease progresses.

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Strohman foresaw a rift between basic and applied biology coming.

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These kits provide a hands-on approach to basic experimentation, while welcoming a natural progression with more advanced kits such as Microchemistry and Biology kits, allowing for the specialization of many students, knowing that the reusable kits can serve multiple classes.

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