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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."
Probably stating the obvious here, but once this gets dependable and easy to form to different needs, "BioBricks" might spell the end of people dying due to lack of suitable organ donors.
I think we will rather see that before we see any horror scenarios like "Blade Runner like replicant slaves".
Given the fact that we haven't even yet created a single bacterium from scratch (the closest we've come is to "bum out" all the optional instructions from one of the simplest known naturally-occuring bacteria to create the simplest possible bacterium we could think of), how long will it be before we have this hot new vapourware biotech? Wake me when it's over... oh, in about 20 YEARS. Yet more speculative flimflam.
Incidentally, what in the heck does this tech have to do with Blade Runner? Blade Runner replicants were seemingly composed of individual organs and tissues grown de novo in labs and vats (e.g. the eyes in Chu's "Eye World"). Blade Runner replicants are built of "organ bricks", not "DNA bricks" as being discussed here. Jesus Christ...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Ahm.. can anyone enlighten us in plain english if this is about that so-called 'Biologic Computer' we've read about last year? I can't recall the technology used on that one and I'm sure most readers with no background in genetics have similar questions.
People have been modifying bacteria, viruses and other simple organisms to make them do things they usually don't. However, even if these things are published, it is not easy to share this information. A parts-library will help because is like open source and is hopefully machine-searchable. That itself is worth the trouble. What was once the technique and expertise of one lab can now be leveraged somewhere else.
IMHO, a parts library should not just have the names of the components but also how they can be interfaced to work properly (Their API). This is more useful and less obvious when constructing devices from biological materials. Biological components are very stringent in the environmental conditions they need to work properly.
They are not claiming or aiming to create "life" but rather new functionality in existing life. Doesn't vaccination do that to us? As for answering fundamental questions, I'm not sure we get any closer. Describing the processes of biology doesn't do much to explain why it is so.
Humans have such a good sense of humor!
This would help explain near-death experiences where the person who is clinically brain-dead can have experiences during this dead period.
What?
A person who is brain-dead doesn't come back. You meant a person who is temporarily diagnosed as dead, based on lack of pulse.
Near-death experiences can be summoned, almost by will. Slip someone a dose of 3mg/kg ketamine HCl without their knowledge. When their trips ends, tell them you thought they had died, they'll categorize their trip as a "near-death" experience. Their descriptions will also be pretty similar to those who were technically near death.
I think most of us would consider an organism to be synthetic if it's built from scratch with non-living components.
So the question becomes, can one build a "living" (i.e. identical to a natural) virus from only the parts that make it up? In other words, would a virus, or any living thing, become alive once someone puts together all the parts in exactly the same way?
And then some might still say that just because it acts identical to the naturally occuring organism doesn't mean it's alive. It acts alive, but nature didn't give it a soul.
I think we'll end up with more questions than answers, more debate than decisions.
Developers: We can use your help.
Or the end of people dying altogether?
Organ replacement can not eliminate all naturally occurring deaths. People will allow any organ to be replaced except for one: the brain. The rest of the body can live or be replaced with better parts, but the brain will not last forever. Either regenerative processes need to be developed or the brain needs to become downloadable. If we could recreate nerve cells exactly as needed or download a mind from one brain into another then we might be able to end natural death.
Developers: We can use your help.
Before you all get carried away with this, a few things to note:
This is a bacterial genome. What is currently being produced is isolated sets of parts of the genome that have been cataloged as having specific functions in a bacteria. These 'blocks' could be put together, if you knew how to regulate all of them, and you were smart enough to add all the neccesary components for replication.
This sort of information is already known for some bacteria. There is a very small amount of DNA in bacterial genomes, and it's easy to sequence. On top of that, it's easier to figure out exactly what a particular bit of sequence does, so this is just creating a one stop shop to look up particular coding sequences.
What this *isn't* is a eukaryotic genome. You aren't going to be putting together complex organisms this way in our lifetime. We don't even know what the VAST majority of the genome does. Do you remember the phrase 'junk dna'? We're now figuring out that the 'junk' actually has function, and there's even been a case where a mutation in intronic DNA has been shown to cause disease. Life is much more complicated in organisms larger than bacteria, and it's going to take the rest of our lives to reverse engineer complex life, much less begin to design it from scratch.
So, the take home message: It's cool, and it may be useful for bacteria. We're not going to grow organisms, people, tissue, organs, etc with this idea.
This is a tragically popular misconception, especially amongst that part of the nerd herd that hasn't studied enough philosophy. Science+technology has been a great success, sure, but it has in no way demonstrated that "what you can measure is all that there is". On the contrary: what you can measure is all that science can deal with. There may well be such a thing as a soul or a spirit, but unless we can measure it, we'll never have a science related to it.
The idea, "all you can measure is all there is", is a metaphysical statement (a philosophical claim of the grandest sort, IMO) congruent with the position known as materialism. The assumption that "there's no mystery... that cannot be apprehended" (by science) is a tenet of scientism, not science. It's just a way of saying, "I don't believe that anything exists which transcends our ability to analyse scientifically". You can believe that if it pleases you to do so, but you're utterly deluded if you think science has demonstrated anything of the sort. Such demonstrations are beyond the power and scope of science; philosophers of metaphysics might get there eventually, but given progress in the field to date, I doubt it very much.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
is a human being.
When you take your first science course, you will learn that scientific definitions are meant to be as specific as possible.
Vaugely describing a human being as anything ranging from a living diploid cell that can divide into several potential organisms or fuse with another into one, to an individual organism with a complex interdependent organ system, along with explanations of why some diploid cells formed by gametic fusion are not "human beings" while others are (depending on how long ago the fusion took place), is a definition based on a religious or philosophical need, not a scientfic one.
It only sounds simple and straightforward to people who don't know the details of reproduction in specific and cellular biology in general.
Of course, the truth is, you do get it, you're just engaging in sophistry to deny the fact that what you attack is the harvesting of human cells for the benefit of human beings.