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Synthetic Life In The Lab

Posted by Hemos on from the trying-to-build-it-all dept.

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."

3 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. Re:If only we had this for software engineering... by jacquesm · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    that has actually been on my todo list for quite a while now, I have been sketching some bits & pieces (input / output studs), and I've been looking at 'wrapping' the bricks in some kind of object brokerage architecture.

    I keep finding myself writing the same 'idiomatic' code over and over again, and as a kid I used to be a big lego fan.

    Neat things: blocks operating on blocks, container blocks (abstraction, look 'inside' the block and see other blocks)

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  2. Songs with blocks? by AtariAmarok · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Sorry, already been done. That red dude 2nd from the left looks a little like Hellboy, doesn't he?

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  3. Re:If only we had this for software engineering... by Patrik_AKA_RedX · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Funny, you mention Lego. Lego Mindstorm can be programmed with a sort of building block style programming system.
    Also three or four years ago I got the chance to try out a PLC system that was programmed with building blocks (AND, OR, NOT, timer, trigger,...). It had a LCD and a few buttons on it and it could be programmed without a computer. Fun thing to play with, but I prefered the classic text programming.
    This style of programming is quite neat to learn Boolean logic and PLC programming, but IMO it isn't very practical for larger programs.