Here’s an addendum to a story we ran last week about the industrialization of synthetic biology, a field that, in many ways, got its start in Boston.

Microsoft announced yesterday that it will give out grants for the first time for research in synthetic biology. Six groups, including one from Harvard, will receive a total of nearly $600,000.

Interesting that a software company has chosen to invest in life sciences research, though not surprising that it’s chosen to focus more on the computational side of things. With biology growing more quantitative, MS appears to see this as a new opportunity. Could Microsoft one day become a leader in bioinformatics/computational biology software?