As I opened the email I had a lateral vision of Bruce Sterling predicting the present in prankster mode. Here was my first biotech spam offering me DNA-Polymerases at a very special price. This was the text I got from the CEO of ATG biosynthetics:

"Dear Scientist,

we like to introduce to you ATG:biosynthetics GmbH, located in Germany and Canada. ATG offers bioproducts for research in life science as well as for related industries. In future in addition to our own products and services ATG will offer products and services of other biotech companies via our ATG:warehouse data base. Most frequently used enzymes in research today are DNA-Polymerases. We like to offer to you FIREPol, THERMIPol, and HOT FIREPol DNA-Polymerases an in addition Desoxyribonuclease I for a very special price".

My first reaction was that this was a new variant in the surreal tactics adopted by some porn spammer. But curiousity (which killed the genetically modified cat) grabbed me and I clicked through. Lo and behold! Instead of landing on a mutant online casino site, this actually looked kosher. I even googled up the CEO's CV. All authentic.

One question remained though: why is that having deciphered the building blocks of life, websites are still getting built with more twists than a helix?