"I Have Seen the Future and It's All in the Genes"

The winner of the 2008 Science Writer Award (sponsored by The Daily Telegraph, Bayer, and The Royal Society) in the 20-28 year old category was Imperial College biochemistry graduate Erika Cule, for her near future tale of genetic sequencing.

Read her winning entry: "I have seen the future and it's all in the genes"

In an interview with the Imperial College news department, she says that she was trying to write something that would be interesting to those who don't do much reading about science.

I wanted to write an essay which was accessible and I was really pleased when friends of mine, who never normally read anything scientific, said they had read it and enjoyed it. Big influences on me include Craig Ventor’s biography and Nature Futures, the science-fiction writing forum.

She herself is involved in research that sounds pretty science fictional:

I am currently a member of Imperial College’s iGEM team, the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, which attracts teams from around the world to spend the summer working in the field of synthetic biology to design a functional biological machine.

Our team is engineering the bacterium Bacillus subtilis into a biological printer that will synthesise three dimensional objects.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear more about the Imperial College team after the iGEM Jamboree in November.