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Synthetic Life In The Lab
niktesla writes "Scientific American is carrying a story about
sythetic life - genetic engineered "machines" made from DNA building blocks called "BioBricks". The goal is to produce a library of building blocks that can be assembled to give predictable results. Reminds me of the technology behind Blade Runner's replicants."
MIT Registry of Standard Biological Parts:
http://parts.mit.edu/
As mentioned in the article.
IIRC the definition of life depends on an organism being able to reproduce in some way without having to depend on another species. By that definition viruses are not alive, as they depend on some kind of host.
Tell that to Arthur C. Clarke.
His 'satellites' were part of a story, as was radar.
We already have problems with Genetically engineered crops, now it appears we have custom bacteria on the way. (here already, actually)
An earlier Slashdot topic addressed this, though without many supporting links. Here are a few:
"Toxic pollen from widely planted, genetically modified corn can kill monarch butterflies, Cornell study shows"
Genetically Engineered Corn Appears in One-Tenth of Grain Tests"
Nebraska soybeans were contaminated with engineered corn grown by ProdiGene in 2001"
These links only scratch the surface of the problems with G.E crops but serve to illustrate the point.
As far as I can see no 'special' precautions are being taken to isolate these experiments from the biosphere. Indeed, the work is being performed in ordinary university labs and *some* of the work at least is being done with common human bacteria.
The article claims "self policing" has worked for recombinant-DNA technology and calls for an Asilomar Conference to address the issue of safety.
I refer you to this article
Sounds like bio-hackers are on the way. I remind you, once the geni is out of the bottle it's damn hard (impossible) to put it back!
He might be talking about things like GM pollen escaping into other crops. Aside from political/legal stupidities of farmers getting sued, there is a serious danger in contamination of wild species. If we end up with a GM monoculture of food a century from now, that puts us one virus away from global famine.
Any science fiction matter transporter really works by scanning the original, making a copy at the destination, and destroying the original. Usually they squeamishly avoid the potential paradoxen by making the scanning process itself destructive.
But any number of Star Trek 'transporter accident' episodes devolve from the separation of these steps. Including the fact that *there is a pattern buffer* and only the readily-available matter supply prevents you from marching an army of yourself out of the transporter.
In "The Saga of Cuckoo" (author's name forgotten) their transporter clearly works by copying, and they touch on what happens when copies meet, including copies taken at different times and copies of friends you hadn't met, yet.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Depending on the branch of mathematics (classical, intuitionism, etc) true is not necessarily the opposite of false. This is referred to as the law of the excluded middle, and its status as a law has been debated time and again.
Moreover, the parts of the brain that control life support (heart=beating, vasculature=functioning, etc) are not so easily divided into hemishperes as is are the lobes. These are also the regions in which a good deal of the left-right crossover in the central nervous system takes place. I doubt you would be able to remove one side without seriously disrupting the other.
*For the anatomists : yes, I know that the ganglia are also hemispheric. They do, however, have communicating white matter going between the hemispheres.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
It's expensive, but that's a little over the top. Unless, of course, you're talkng about building a lab from "open field" to "research building", in which case you're a bit low. We started up our lab with $500k startup funds. We've grown a LOT since then, and put a lot more money into it, but I remember not even using all the startup grant. I also recall that during the budgeting phase, we figured on a cost of $20k/yr/person in reagents. So yeas, it gets really expensive.
Anyway, you're in bioinformatics, so you probably work with chips & arrays. I recall that equipment is quite expensive. We normally farm out the data collection part of that.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.