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Freeman Dyson On Open Source Biology
kripkenstein sends us an article by Freeman Dyson in the NY Review of Books, in which the eminent physicist and big thinker takes on the possible end to the Darwinian era of speciation that has endured 3 billion years on this planet. He discusses the history and future of biology in terms that many in this community will find familiar: "[We can speculate about] a golden age... when horizontal gene transfer was universal and separate species did not yet exist. Life was then a community of cells of various kinds, sharing their genetic information... Evolution could be rapid... But then, one evil day, a cell resembling a primitive bacterium happened to find itself one jump ahead of its neighbors in efficiency. That cell, anticipating Bill Gates by three billion years, separated itself from the community and refused to share... [But] now, as Homo sapiens domesticates the new biotechnology, we are reviving the ancient... practice of horizontal gene transfer, moving genes easily from microbes to plants and animals, blurring the boundaries between species. We are moving rapidly into the post-Darwinian era, when... the rules of Open Source sharing will be extended from the exchange of software to the exchange of genes. Then the evolution of life will once again be communal, as it was in the good old days before separate species and intellectual property were invented."
At its heart, the science of Information Technology will grow and consume all other industries. Biology is a form of information technology - the information contained in the DNA/RNA and mitochondria define the outcome of the biological organism - they are the software that comprises us.
It's not written in a language easily understood by humanity, but once the concepts of how things really work together are clearly understood, it won't be long before a high-level language can be developed to define the requested behavior and structures can then be "compiled" into an organism.
This is the fusion of biology and information technology commonly called the technology singularity and which, I'm convinced, is happening all around us.
Slow at first, growing towards advancing rapidly. I see it in software, networks, information technology, science, medical technology, and manufacturing. It's amazing, exciting, and thrillingly dangerous all at once. I honestly thing that we'll either pull it off, and move beyond evolution to create an entirely new form of life, or destroy ourselves and regress to bacteria, rodents, insect life.
Either way, we aren't in Kansas, anymore.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Until you supply the appropriate credentials and/or published journal articles proving your authority in the field, I'll take your comments with the same grain of salt.Ugh. Platitudinous drivel. What the heck is a great scientist? Someone who agrees with the scientific establishment on every single issue? So, in your opinion, can we now state that Sir Isaac Newton was not a great scientist because of his prodigious theological publications?
I would submit that, even though he were wrong on the one issue, he's still smarter than you in his chosen field of study. And means you should probably listen.
Good points here, but you've left out one really important one: there already
is horizontal gene flow. Cross-breeding does it, and it's more common
that you usually think.
Viruses reproduce by "horizontal gene flow."
What part of "A well regulated militia" do you not understand?
It's not necessarily flawed in its suggestions for what the post-darwinian era actually means to the deepest extent. sex between humans is only sharing between homo sapiens, not genes from other species, meaning your second point (2.), is incorrect as HGT would allow us to import genes from other species for gene therapy in parts of our bodies that need it to treat a disease, or cosmetically like something genetically Botox, etc. The difference here is that bio-engineers would aim to insert genes in live tissues rather than correcting a teratogenic offspring, much like bacteria pick up genes during their lifetime and use it for their benefit, as opposed to implementing its "gene updates" in the next generation, where both HGT and "vertical" (?) gene transfer proponents benefit.
c iens has examples of plasmids from a bacteria that is inserted into a plant genome. to me, it's more of a technical obstacle than an ideological one to create an organelle in humans in one or a few places of the body to make use of HGT (but regulated of course).
3. HGT might not foster rapid evolution- in the traditional sense. time is measured different for humans. Here, applying HGT by humans instead of bacteria is different because we have far more components and resultingly, a very small (or big) specific goal (i.e. an in vivo genetic vaccine against a flu, for example) when using HGT. Evolution for humans becomes much more subjective as our issues and desires in society become the direction (of many choices) of WHAT and HOW fast we're evolving. bacteria don't talk and go on the internet, and a microenvironment of thermophiles' HGT activity in Yellowstone probably will have very little relevance to ones in hydrothermal vents on the sea floor, while humans all over the world are much closer and our survival issues are all much more connnected when there's a flu and there's airplanes. So, picking up fragments of DNA might not be "fast/expedient" by synthesizing it in a lab, but it could be faster than waiting a generation or 9 months to get its in vivo in effect.
4. I think the reason we don't have a DNA extracting kit in our digestive tract is simply because it wasn't extremely required for our survival, but we could later engineer a use for one (enter a post-darwinian era). there are other organisms that do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrobacterium_tumefa
It all depends on the definition of "meant". There is some evidence that homosexuality is an advantage - the basic idea is that homosexual aunties or uncles improve the odds of offspring surviving. Even though there is not a direct transfer of genes, increasing the survival odds of people who carry some of your genes improves the survival odds from the gene's point of view.
It could be argued (as the original post did) that homosexuality is a kill-switch in some sense. From a biological programming point of view - it is, as it encodes for a behaviour that stops the genes from reproducing directly. Of course, many people would be arguing about "meant" as an ethical or moral judgment. And there, all bets are off, a rational person could argue that if we start designing our own life that its time for us to define morality ourselves rather than $BOOK of $DIETY. But this being slashdot that is what most of the discussion will follow...
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