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Open Source, Genetically Engineered Machines From a Kit?

Posted by Zonk on from the quite-a-kit dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Students in an MIT competition are helping to build a dev-kit for cells. Together with synthetic biologists, they're building a Registry of Standard Biological Parts called BioBricks. They aim to do for cells what open source software has done for computers. 'The competition is a showcase for the burgeoning field of synthetic biology. Knight and his colleagues Randy Rettberg and Drew Endy, who created the contest in 2004, want to make biological systems easy to build by applying the tools of computer science and engineering: using standard parts and modular design to simplify complex systems. The goal is to create "genetic Legos" that could produce any chemical, from ethanol to pharmaceuticals.'"

157 comments

  1. Any chemical? by rrohbeck · · Score: 3, Funny

    Sweet. I can think of a few.

    --
    thegodmovie.com - watch it
    1. Re:Any chemical? by Lije+Baley · · Score: 1

      Homeland Security says, "Noooooo."

      --
      Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
    2. Re:Any chemical? by rrohbeck · · Score: 3, Insightful

      My first thoughts would have been more in DEA territory.

      --
      thegodmovie.com - watch it
    3. Re:Any chemical? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      GP is right, but I think you might be wrong.

      Homeland Security, whatever else, is also about security.
      DEA will probably see this and be like "Woot! Budget increase! Golden pens and clipboards for all!"

  2. Ha! I love it by ByOhTek · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I had a genetics prof in 2002/2003 some time, that said this kind of thing was at least 40 years off...

    I would love to stick this web page in his face.

    --
    Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
    1. Re:Ha! I love it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is your prof the kind of guy who needs a face stickin'?

    2. Re:Ha! I love it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      That's okay, it won't be long now before you can grow a copy of his face to stick this paper into.

    3. Re:Ha! I love it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You Nexus Six? I made you eyes! Highest quality. Brrrr. It cold in here.

  3. What about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the already patented parts?

  4. anyone else wnat to sign up... by non · · Score: 1

    for 'Shaping 101'?

    --
    ...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
  5. BioBrick? Please... by theRhinoceros · · Score: 2, Funny

    BioBricks? But 'Plasmid' and 'tonic' have such nicer rings to them...

    1. Re:BioBrick? Please... by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 1

      BioBricks? Soon to be marketed under the LEGO Mindstorms product line.
      --
      Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
    2. Re:BioBrick? Please... by Ngarrang · · Score: 1

      Or maybe Genetix (play on Magnetix)

      --
      Bearded Dragon
    3. Re:BioBrick? Please... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Only if your Daddy is stronger than Hercules.

    4. Re:BioBrick? Please... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, but those words already have real meanings.

    5. Re:BioBrick? Please... by sgt_doom · · Score: 1

      Wow...built like BioBricks, huh? Does this mean I could put together Paris Hilton....or Lindsey Lohan??

    6. Re:BioBrick? Please... by jamstar7 · · Score: 1
      Soon.

      But why would you want to? Wouldn't they be more trouble than they're worth?

      --
      Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
    7. Re:BioBrick? Please... by snickkers · · Score: 1

      sounds like toilet humour to me.

      --
      GLORX 3:16
  6. Basic Programming Blocks? by the_B0fh · · Score: 3, Funny

    I just hope that these basic "programming" blocks do not turn out to be Windows.

    1. Re:Basic Programming Blocks? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well if Microsoft made it the only thing that would happen is that the flower would turn blue and die... ...unless it dropped a seed pod and carpeted the earth as an invasive noxious weed....

    2. Re:Basic Programming Blocks? by ByOhTek · · Score: 1

      THis is MIT they are talking about.

      They kindof look down on Unix around there. I vaguely remember a friend who went there mentioning they used some OSS variant of Unix that she was fairly sure not to be Linux. She said it developed there and didn't have a huge base.

      --
      Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
  7. Just what we need by Xonstantine · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A biowarfare construction kit distributed to the masses.

    1. Re:Just what we need by kars · · Score: 1

      Brings a whole new meaning to the term "root"-kit...

      --
      Take life easy: one bit at a time.
    2. Re:Just what we need by bhima · · Score: 1

      meh... movable type has been around for ages and that's far, far more dangerous.

      --
      Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
    3. Re:Just what we need by dfetter · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A biowarfare construction kit distributed to the masses. Do you realize that you're making the argument for taking away everything from "the masses," which most emphatically includes you, that might conceivably be misused to harm someone. Are you ready to give up your car? Your computer? Your kitchen utensils?
      --
      What part of "A well regulated militia" do you not understand?
    4. Re:Just what we need by Xonstantine · · Score: 4, Interesting

      My computer, my kitchen utensils, and my car can't kill tens of millions of people.

      This is simply a probability function. The more people that have the ability to create a biowarfare agent, the higher the chances that you'll have one released into the wild.

      Consider this. The DNA sequence for the 1918 avian flu virus is public domain. You can buy base pair sequences online. It's not that difficult to add 1 and 1 to get 2. This isn't really technology you want to democratize to the masses. The number of angst ridden hate the world biochemists is much smaller than the number of angst ridden pimple faced teenagers. Given the ability, sooner or later one of them is going to think it's a cool idea to wipe out half the human species and will try.

    5. Re:Just what we need by geekoid · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Here it comes, alarmist without a clue of the field there worried about. At least your on the band wagon early with this one.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    6. Re:Just what we need by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      Reminds me of the periodic scares that we got in the 1980s when the media would report on how a chemistry grad with some household chemicals could easily produce a chemical weapon capable of wiping out all life in a mile's radius from one drop.

      It really hasn't happened very often. I think some Japanese terror group once killed people on the Tokyo subway using chemical weapons, but that was one of the few times such a thing happened. We certainly haven't seen humanity wiped out by angry chemistry graduates.

      The human body has an immune system capable of learning about new threats and creating antibodies to tackle them. In cases where that system has failed on a dramatic level, such as the plague, there have been multiple factors at work, not just really special microbes or virusses. For a system to survive, it also cannot be ridiculously successful.

      I'm not saying there's no threat, but we need a lethal combination of angry biologists and a design for an unbelievably successful virus. The success of conventional warfare as opposed to chemical on both the battlefield and the terrorist's cities suggests that few attempts would ever be made to use such a technique.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    7. Re:Just what we need by Xonstantine · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Here it comes, alarmist without a clue of the field there worried about. At least your on the band wagon early with this one. Actually, I majored in biology and have done a fair amount of research into biowarfare agents. So I do, in fact, have a clue about what I'm talking about.

      If I'm being alarmist about this, why not let anyone buy weapons grade plutonium or uranium and publish functional weapons designs along with the CAD/CAM instructions? After all, using your logic it's alarmist to think anyone would actually go to the trouble of actually constructing and using a bomb.

      After all, the technical and monetary investment needed to build a nuclear bomb is several orders of magnitude greater than what is required to build a biological agent. If we don't have anything to worry about with biological agents, then obviously our nuke fears are overblown as well.
    8. Re:Just what we need by dfetter · · Score: 1

      My computer, my kitchen utensils, and my car can't kill tens of millions of people. If you're going to say that someone could create a nasty biological strain with this that they couldn't have constructed without it, you'll have to provide some evidence. For example, if you simply take a stack of petri dishes, expose the first one to air, pick the fastest-growing strain, then lather, rinse and repeat 20 times, the resulting strain will be lethal.

      What really bugs me is the automatic assumption that anything people can use their curiosity on will be so misused that we have to ban it in advance of any evidence that it will actually cause any harm.
      --
      What part of "A well regulated militia" do you not understand?
    9. Re:Just what we need by Xonstantine · · Score: 1

      I'm not saying there's no threat, but we need a lethal combination of angry biologists and a design for an unbelievably successful virus. The success of conventional warfare as opposed to chemical on both the battlefield and the terrorist's cities suggests that few attempts would ever be made to use such a technique. You don't really need a combination of angry biologists, and you don't need an unbelievably successful virus or bacterial agent. You just need a modestly successful one. Non-weapons grade anthrax may not kill you as fast or in as small doses as weapons grade anthrax, but it'll still kill you. And live bacteria and viral agents are the gift that keeps on giving.
    10. Re:Just what we need by Assassin+bug · · Score: 1

      Your being paranoid. It is easy to add 1 and 1 to get 2. It is not currently possible to order the entire genome of Influenzavirus, strain H1N1, and create an epidemic. You don't really know what your talking about. Just for giggles say you could mastermind such an endevour and order your virus "to go". You could order a giant 200-base oligo from IDT and it would cost you about $5,435.20(US) and it would come in about 68 chucks that you would then have to reconstruct into its original multipartite genome. This would not be easy. This would require a very large lab with people and resources. Also, as with many other viruses, many of the base sequences are estimates and, additionally, may not represent the most virulent genome from the quasispecies population. I don't think the world needs to worry about pimple-faced teenagers ravaging the world with influenza. I think the human species should be more concerned (especially in the "developed nations") with pimple-faced teenagers doing nothing.

    11. Re:Just what we need by wizardforce · · Score: 1

      the tools used for terrorism are not the problem, the underlying cause of terrorism in the first place *is* the problem and its consistently ignored in favor of restricting the advances of technology for "safety" and it's absolute bs.

      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    12. Re:Just what we need by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      For the nightmare scenario the GGP was referring to, yes you need the combination of angry biologists and a design for an unbelievably successful virus or bacteria. Sure, you can cause some damage with a less potent biological agent, but you can do that today without the need for a genetic Lego set.

      Biological warfare is not new. Besieged cities in the middle ages would have diseased animals thrown into them by the attacking armies. Doing this kind of relatively low impact stuff isn't rocket science. The kinds of scare the GGP was talking about are at a whole other level, and if the experience of other "nightmare scenario" technologies is anything to go by, we're really not going to see it happen, at least, not in any way with any substantial material impact.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    13. Re:Just what we need by Xonstantine · · Score: 1

      the tools used for terrorism are not the problem, the underlying cause of terrorism in the first place *is* the problem and its consistently ignored in favor of restricting the advances of technology for "safety" and it's absolute bs. Sure. Whatever.

      Look, society has no problem over reacting to low probability, low impact events like school shootings. So now we have a proliferation of "zero tolerance" policies in schools that result in suspensions and even expulsions over things like cake knives being seen in a locked car in the student parking lot or being in possession of aspirin (drugs are bad). The reason why these are low impact events is the destructive ability of a deranged school shooter is limited. The reason why it's low probability is because the probability of a student being a victim is very small.

      Biowarfare agents and nuclear terrorism fall into the low probability, high impact event category. Meaning, yes, the overall probability of them happening is low, but the impact if it does happen is potentially very, very high. The reason why these things are low probability is because it takes a technically sophisticated and wealthy actor to produce the agents/weapons. Not because we lack for people willing to try. Lowering the technical threshold raises the probability. Raise it high enough, and you are no longer talking about probability, you're talking certainty.
    14. Re:Just what we need by wizardforce · · Score: 1

      I understand your point but I'm curious as to what you suggest we do about it. hide under a rock? ban the technology? forbid the creation of the technology in the first place? or should we take advantage of the technology to prevent these same kind of weapons from being effective?

      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    15. Re:Just what we need by Xonstantine · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure there is anything we CAN do about it. Hence my original comment "just what we need..."

      It is what it is, and to some extent the genie is already out of the bottle.

    16. Re:Just what we need by wizardforce · · Score: 1

      indeed, my concern about the whole thing is that although we can probably stop the spread of these diseases using the same technology that created them, many people would die in the mean time. Even worse is that such a powerful technology is probably going to be abused as much as it will be for doing good which is a shame.

      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    17. Re:Just what we need by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 1
      What really bugs me is the automatic assumption that anything people can use their curiosity on will be so misused that we have to ban it in advance of any evidence that it will actually cause any harm.

      Sigh ... we used to say that about computer software. Now we'll *really* need to keep our antivirus signatures up to date.

      --
      Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
    18. Re:Just what we need by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      so your having to worry about antivirus signatures is due to people having the freedom to explore and couldn't possibly be due to running Microsoft's bloated, poor quality crapware for which pre-teens can write malware, rather than a real OS?

    19. Re:Just what we need by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 1
      Ahh, the grand assumption that I'm in Microsoft's pocket, combined with a bandwagon ad-hominem that attempts to tie me to your perception of a common enemy.

      You're a tool.

      --
      Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
  8. Not the copyright holders. by dotancohen · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now that they've released it under open source, God is going to sue them for copyright infringement.

    --
    It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
  9. These people are obviously terrorists by zappepcs · · Score: 1

    Imagine creating toothpaste that when combined with mashed up peanuts (salted) becomes an explosive?

    On a lighter note, do you think they can turn lead into gold? I hear Ron Paul would like to have some more of it to back the dollar?

    --
    Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
    1. Re:These people are obviously terrorists by Anonymous+Crowhead · · Score: 1

      On a lighter note, do you think they can turn lead into gold?

      Lead can be turned into gold. It's just prohibitively expensive.

    2. Re:These people are obviously terrorists by Grimholtt · · Score: 1

      That would completely crash the world economy.

    3. Re:These people are obviously terrorists by geekoid · · Score: 1

      no it wouldn't. mThe current economy is based on faith in little pieces of paper.

      The store says milk is worth 2 pieces of paper, you pay two pieces of paper, you say from you employer, I need 2000 piece of paper to do work, your landlord says you can stay for 200 pieces of paper.

      Gold isn't needed. Yes, it's based on a non tangible. So what?

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    4. Re:These people are obviously terrorists by Anonymous+Crowhead · · Score: 1

      Paper? More like bits and bytes these days.

    5. Re:These people are obviously terrorists by SchmellsAngel · · Score: 1

      The resulting gold would burn a hole in your pocket, were you foolish enough to pocket it.

      --
      We must repeat.
  10. Hrmmmmm... by Steauengeglase · · Score: 1

    So the old 2 horny boys and a chemistry set scenario can finally come to pass.

    1. Re:Hrmmmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The new line of LegoLisa, eh? I just can't decide though, so I'll just have to get one of the brunette models and one of the blonde ones too.

  11. New License on Life by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A consortium of universities will release the first draft of the BioBrick Public License in 2008. It will allow anyone to use the biological parts -- essentially a cellular dev kit -- for free.

    What is this crap about a license taking months to produce and release? They should just release it with a license saying everything made with the kit is in the public domain, with the single exception to that disclaimer of all rights that any derivative must also come with that license. Why would it take more than 5 minutes to agree to release that license, and release it?

    When some university comes after me for metabolizing glucose as part of my job (moving a muscle during business hours, just like you sometimes do), I don't want to have to argue about some license they've got on some DNA they synthesized.

    All these patents on discovered genes are the purest BS violation of prior art. Any complexity in this BioBrick Public License will create more problems than it could ever solve.
    --

    --
    make install -not war

    1. Re:New License on Life by Raindance · · Score: 1

      What is this crap about a license taking months to produce and release? They should just release it with a license saying everything made with the kit is in the public domain, with the single exception to that disclaimer of all rights that any derivative must also come with that license. Why would it take more than 5 minutes to agree to release that license, and release it?


      You know, you'd think it should be that simple. But to actually build legal code that would implement those protections in enough jurisdictions is a huge undertaking. Setting aside that "public domain" would no longer be an apt description of the license once the "share-alike" provision is attached, I could see how bio-oriented licenses could take that long and more.

      See e.g., how much work has gone into the relatively simple Creative Commons licenses in order to make them legally solid, clearly understandable, and inter-compatible. And that's for text, a medium with lots of 'legal infrastructure' to draw from.

      Legal stuff takes time, sadly. And an intended licensing result that can be described simply may involve a very complex legal document.
    2. Re:New License on Life by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1

      Nah, the CC licenses are complex. There's no reason the license can't read "this software/dataset/whatever is hereby released from any rights or obligations by either the recipient or anyone from whom they receive it, except the obligation to include this notice is required".

      Even if that needs tweaking by a lawyer, any lawyer who can't make that sound, given all the knowledge of existing contracts, isn't worth their own license.

      Besides, that contract isn't even necessary. They can just release it with "this thing is hereby placed in the public domain". If they want to ensure that any changes or derivations are forced to be published, which I don't see as necessary, they can publish it under the GPL, which is easier to defend precisely because it's not new. If it's content, not code, they can publish it under an existing CC.

      A delay of several months to release a new license is only a way to reserve some other rights to themselves. Which is crap.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

    3. Re:New License on Life by Raindance · · Score: 1

      Besides, that contract isn't even necessary. They can just release it with "this thing is hereby placed in the public domain". If they want to ensure that any changes or derivations are forced to be published, which I don't see as necessary, they can publish it under the GPL, which is easier to defend precisely because it's not new. If it's content, not code, they can publish it under an existing CC.


      Ah, but are the various biobrick items content, or code? I would guess they're neither, but something different-enough to require a license that's structured differently than either the GPL or CC-*.

      Off the top of my head, an open biobrick license would need to deal with a lot of issues dealing with what copyright on biological components (that can't function, or even exist, in a vacuum) means (e.g., where are the boundaries), how any sort of copyleft license would influence the legal status of the organism and what that organism can and cannot be used for, whether an organism is a functional whole or whether (as per e.g., linux) differently-licensed bits can be segregated, and probably many other things I'm missing, all without precedents on what concepts or clauses are enforceable, so it'd have to be written to be bulletproof and as redundant as possible.
    4. Re:New License on Life by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1

      Public domain still covers everything. And with a simple statement of perpetuity for derivatives, it really covers everything, every way, forever. We're talking under an hour for a competent IP lawyer, not months for teams of them.

      Unless they're protecting more than the freedom of what they release, like some of their own private interests in its not-so-free perpetuation.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

    5. Re:New License on Life by brettz9 · · Score: 1

      How about something more like the GPL? Wouldn't a "viral" license be more appropriate?

    6. Re:New License on Life by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1

      Well, that's what I meant by "perpetuity for derivatives". I still think the GPL is more complex than it needs to be for what it does. Which means that it's possible that it does more than what we think, if a good lawyer works it, including working against what we think.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

    7. Re:New License on Life by brettz9 · · Score: 1

      Thanks... I was attempting a pun with the "viral" reference, but thank you for your insights...

    8. Re:New License on Life by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1

      Gesundheit!

      --

      --
      make install -not war

  12. i swear i'm not a luddite by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Insightful

    upside: any elicit drug, or pharmaceutical intellect property drugs, can be made

    downside: hello nerve gas

    results: all of the pluses and minuses of free computer code manipulations we are familiar with (intellectual property meltdown, hackers, etc.), replicated in the world of biochemistry. except this time, the script kiddies are playing with petri dishes

    what took an entire universy research department, with all the pcr machines, southern blots, grad students, etc. 10 years ago, will 10 years from now be on the workbench of high school students

    i'm all one for the relentless march of technology, and there is no putting pandora back in the box, but this leaves me feeling queasy

    maybe it's just the GM wasabi in my sushi

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:i swear i'm not a luddite by LionMage · · Score: 2, Informative
      Wow... Normally, I'd let this stuff slide, but...

      upside: any elicit drug [...]
      Emphasis added. The word you want to use here is "illicit," as in illegal. "Elicit" is a homophone, but means something entirely different.

      [...] and there is no putting pandora back in the box [...]
      OK, Pandora was never in the box, you dig? The box (actually a jar in better translations) contained a whole host of blessings (at least in some versions), but also many curses besides (from the versions of the myth that have persisted in popular culture), and it was the opening of the box that released these ills into the world. Most of the versions I've read say that hope was the only thing left in the box after it was carelessly opened, something humanity was allowed to hang onto in order to make up for all the evilness that was let loose, and to compensate us for the good things that were lost. There's a pretty good retelling of the story here.
    2. Re:i swear i'm not a luddite by moosesocks · · Score: 1

      what took an entire universy research department, with all the pcr machines, southern blots, grad students, etc. 10 years ago, will 10 years from now be on the workbench of high school students


      I don't know. Is there any huge reason FOR High School students to be practicing this stuff?

      PCR is surprisingly easy to do (albeit sloppily). Looking back, my high school probably had most of the necessary equipment. However, I can't really think of the educational value of performing a PCR reaction, given that although the mechanisms may be somewhat complex, the end result is more or less analogous to a photocopier.

      Practical hands-on work is important for science education, but there's no reason why things need to be kicked up a notch in this case. I did a few labs on gel electrophoresis in HS, and that did a fantastic job of explaining the mechanics of DNA matching.

      The old fashioned chemistry and biology labs taught in High School are more or less going to be just as valid and applicable as they are now for the foreseeable future.
      --
      -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
    3. Re:i swear i'm not a luddite by Upaut · · Score: 3, Insightful

      downside: hello nerve gas

      No. No. You are not going to use that argument here. That is the argument that is killing science. You want to stop someone making deadly gas? Here, not even using the classic "Chlorine" form household chemicals one. How about some phosphene gas? Colourless, odorless, tasteless, kills with low concentration. Can be made with urine (collected, aged, and distilled with charcoal to extract phosphorus), and a some natural gas from a line. Want to ban the action of urination?

      Yes, the knowledge and ability to make some deadly compounds have always existed. Its the blight of the scientist; no one trusts us. Scientists are not the heroes, we are always portrayed as either bumbling and accidentally unleashing a horror onto the world, or a megalomaniac bent on global conquest. But the benefit of being able to learn at home far outweighs one or two people that accidently injure themselves. The best way of combatting these accidents? Promoting more science at home. With knowledge instilled at a young age, then its less likely that someone will get hurt, and with learning responsibility at a young age, less likely to hurt others. Its kinda like taking karate, no mater how pissed you get, you don't whip out the years of honed skills for revenge. Its just not polite.

      As a young lad I had seven layers of shit beaten out of me, almost on a daily basis. What did I do? Did I take my gun and shoot everyone? Did I make explosives and take everyone out with me? Did I gas my tormentors? Did I use my historical knowledge of poisons craft a unique death? Nope. Wouldn't. Because all life is important, even the life of the dick that is kicking you in the skull. On the other hand, my former tormentors might have notice they went through tires and cars in general faster then their classmates... Never said I was above all forms of petty vengeance...

      --
      3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
    4. Re:i swear i'm not a luddite by SchmellsAngel · · Score: 1

      I want a vat-grown car. That runs on biofuel. Parked in front of my biohouse. It doesn't have to fly to impress me. Some high-school kid will design it for me, with BioBricks or the next thing. New, bad laws will be hurriedly enacted. What a century this will be! Less genocide, please.

      --
      We must repeat.
  13. skunkopotamus? by david_bonn · · Score: 1

    I'm just thinking of the applications for household pets...

    Dwarf elephants the size of kittens. Basselopes. Maybe even unicorns...

    1. Re:skunkopotamus? by Penguinshit · · Score: 1

      Snipes... Don't forget snipes.

      --

      I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...

    2. Re:skunkopotamus? by geekoid · · Score: 1

      OMG, if my daughter reads that I'm doomed.
      "Daddy can I have a Unicorn"

      OTOH, it would be a great test of her virginity in a bunch of years.

      "Sweatheart, Why won't Uni let you pet him? nN an unrelated note, I will need to find my gun before your boyfriend arrives to pick you up...and my shovel."

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  14. Saw a talk by Tom Knight recently by Mr.Ned · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I saw a talk by Tom Knight recently about BioBricks. It's a cool concept.

    Some interesting points I remember from the talk:

    - His lab and others like it are trying to take the craft out of manipulating cells and make it an engineering discipline.

    - They've got ready-made kits of cell building blocks that you can piece together like Legos, and are adding thousands of new ones each year.

    - Cells are enormously more efficient at storing information that we can in silicon - 5 or 6 orders of magnitude more dense - but most cells aren't good at writing new data, just reading it.

    - Cells are really good at making precise structures at the atomic level, but our mechanical processes rely on statistics and probabilities to get things right. The smaller the structures get, the more a small statistical variation can really mess things up. Carbon nanotubes are much-hyped, and guess what's really good at making carbon structures?

    - Another useful critter that was created for the last competition detected arsenic in water. The best manufactured/chemical solution costs is tens of dollars per test; using these kits, undergraduates from Edinburgh created something over a summer that is so cheap the bottles to put it in are the dominate cost.

    1. Re:Saw a talk by Tom Knight recently by Mr.Ned · · Score: 1

      Few other things I forgot to mention:

      - They're working with BSL-1 critters, which he described as "don't eat them, but if you do, nothing bad will happen"

      - The critters they create are not as fit as the ones they created them from, so even if they did get out, they're not likely to survive. He's in the business of making them more simple so they're easier to understand and build, and by simplifying, they're losing functionality. Apparently a e. coli can act completely differently depending on its environment - dirt or your stomach - and by simplifying, they lose some of that ability.

    2. Re:Saw a talk by Tom Knight recently by waveclaw · · Score: 1

      They've got ready-made kits of cell building blocks that you can piece together like Legos, and are adding thousands of new ones each year.


      So the race is on. Who will win?

      The backyarders who try to grow their own Stage Trees and escape into orbit?

      Or the href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamist_terrorism"Terrorists with super-Sarin on their suddenly glowing, long-blonde minds?

      Cells are enormously more efficient at storing information that we can in silicon


      Has Microsoft heard about this? It could be useful for Backing Up Your Brain. Maybe with something cellular...
      --

      "You cannot have a General Will unless you have shared experiences. You cannot be fair to people you don't know."
  15. Glub, glub by monkeyboythom · · Score: 1

    Hmmm...

    I was thinking CH3CH2OH

    1. Re:Glub, glub by dfetter · · Score: 1

      If you want to make EtOH, it's easy. There's almost certainly a homebrewer's club near you, and they'll be delighted to show you how.

      --
      What part of "A well regulated militia" do you not understand?
    2. Re:Glub, glub by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 2, Funny

      Oh please. They already have microbes that do that. They're called "yeast".

      I'd be more interested in a more complex molecule...like, say, C20H25N3O. ^_^

      --
      ____

      ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

    3. Re:Glub, glub by geekoid · · Score: 1

      Now they can create perfect yeast.
      They can have better controls, yeast that stops or accelerates at certain points. A new vector for subtle flavors.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  16. But the most important question is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Would these open source cells run linux.

  17. Slashdot Needs An Engineered Calendar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative



    to prevent dupes.

    Zzzz.

  18. This is old news. by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

    I read about this... what? A couple of months ago?

  19. Just in time for Christmas! by davidwr · · Score: 5, Funny

    Announcer: Hey kids! How would you like a chemistry set for Christmas?
    Kids: BOR-ING!
    Announcer: A ray gun?
    Kids: BOR-ING!
    Announcer: How about the new amazing Bio-Bricks!
    Kids: COOL!!!!!

    Announcer voice-over with kids in background hunched over a petri dish full of Bio-Bricks: With Bio-Bricks your kids will have hours upon hours of enjoyment creating new life forms. Bio-Bricks are available at fine genetic research supply stores everywhere.

    Announcer reading legal disclaimer:
    Neither the International Genetically Engineered Machines Competition, MIT, Bejing University, or the government of China is responsible for improper use of Bio-Bricks. Serious injury, mutations, illness, death, or the end of life on Earth may result from improper use of Bio-Bricks. Using Bio-Bricks to create dangerous life forms is not recommended. Adult supervision required.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
    1. Re:Just in time for Christmas! by the_B0fh · · Score: 1

      Is it anything like Aqua Dots?

  20. US Currency is more than a piece of paper by davidwr · · Score: 1

    Money is a piece of paper backed by the full faith and credit of the government of the United States.

    I'm not saying it's worth more than a piece of paper, only that it is more than a piece of paper.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
    1. Re:US Currency is more than a piece of paper by geekoid · · Score: 1

      really? so what would happen if everybody says it's no good? It would be no good. The government can hoot and holler all it wants, but if nobody accepts those little bits of paper they're worthless.

      The illusion that the government can somehow do something about it is a needed one though.
      Don't get me wrong, I like the fact that it's little bits of paper and thing the system is one of the best for continue progress and civilization.

      People who want to bring gold back seem to have forgotten the problems it caused.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    2. Re:US Currency is more than a piece of paper by cromar · · Score: 1

      The thing that gets me is that gold is just about as arbitrary a currency as paper. You can't eat it. You can't get enough of it to build a shelter. It's not great for making basic tools. It's kinda pretty, but so what?

    3. Re:US Currency is more than a piece of paper by Grimholtt · · Score: 1

      Technically speaking all paper currencies are backed by the gold reserves. Therefore, most currencies are dependant on the gold. If anyone could actually create their own gold, it would no longer be a precious metal and just be shiny stuff. The paper currencies that used it for strength would then pretty much be less useful than toiletpaper. Hence, crashed economy.

    4. Re:US Currency is more than a piece of paper by Arthur+B. · · Score: 1

      It's not about being arbitrary. Creating more gold to debase the currency is very expensive and slow. Turning on a printing press is just the flick of a button. And the button is mostly controlled by two groups who are perpetually in debt, the government and the banks.

      A pure paper currency would idealy better than gold, but in the real world, someone always controls the printing press.

      --
      \u262D = \u5350
    5. Re:US Currency is more than a piece of paper by JesseMcDonald · · Score: 1

      Your information is significantly out of date. No major paper currencies are currently backed by anything but tradition. A few minor ones are, at best, "pegged" to other paper currencies.

      In order to be "backed" by something you must be able to take the note or bill to the issuer and receive the indicated goods in exchange. With e.g. a Federal Reserve Note ("dollar" bill) this is not possible -- the indicated goods (one dollar, legally defined as a specific quantity of gold or silver) are not offered in exchange by the Federal Reserve or the Treasury, and in fact cannot be offered at the indicated exchange rate due to the enormous discrepancy between the number of notes on the market (paper and electronic) and the available reserves.

      --
      "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
    6. Re:US Currency is more than a piece of paper by Arthur+B. · · Score: 1

      Such as?

      --
      \u262D = \u5350
    7. Re:US Currency is more than a piece of paper by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The government can require that all taxes, fines, court costs, etc. be paid in little bits of paper, and require taxes be paid if a good or service is exchanged for another good or service.

      That will require people to deal in little bits of paper. If trading a watchamacallit for two shazbots will result in a government-imposed trading tax of 2 little bits of paper, then the people will have to base their economy around little bits of paper or they'll have no way to pay their taxes.

  21. Weird Science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So, can I use this to make my very own Kelly LeBrock?

    1. Re:Weird Science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Only one with a bad yeast infection.

  22. I want to be the first... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    to create an Orc. So please include the pig and human modules please...

    1. Re:I want to be the first... by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) · · Score: 1

      #include <sus_domestica.h>
      #include <homo_sapiens.h>

      Organism *orcus_turpis(Parent *human,Parent *pig)
      {
          Organism *orc = new Organism(human,pig);
          for (Organism::iterator orc_part->parts_begin(); parts!=orc_part->parts_end(); ++orc_part)
          {
              orc_part.set(choose(0.5f,0.5f,human,pig));
          }
          return orc;
      }

      --
      Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
  23. Mod parent informative by davidwr · · Score: 1

    I can't mod this thread.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  24. Scares me by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I don't think about it a whole lot, but back in my mind, I've thought that this is what will kill off all humans on the planet before the end of my natural life. Once you have cheap, easy engineering of microbial life, then all it takes is exactly ONE maniac to design a transmittable disease that will wipe out everyone.

    Don't think anyone would do that? Look at some of the more rabid environmentalists who think the worst thing that ever happened to Earth was humanity. Theodore Kaczinsky was a genius, and with only a slight modification of his psychosis, he would've been a guy who would've thought about wiping everyone out.

    Designing a disease like this would be almost pathetically simple with the right tools. Design it to be extremely infectious, but with an incubation period of 10 years before it starts killing. By the time people start dropping dead, it will be everywhere. 99% of everyone would be dead within months.

    I honestly don't see how it could NOT happen -- eventually. Yet another reason why we need to get people into space habitats.

    If any technology should be tightly controlled, this is it.

    --
    Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
    1. Re:Scares me by squiggleslash · · Score: 3, Funny

      I wouldn't worry too much about that. While most of humanity would be wiped out, Bruce Willis would survive, enabling the scientists to send him back in time to find the origin of the virus. They'll then be able to create a vaccine and we'll be able to live on the surface again.

      We should probably check with him that he didn't see anyone get shot dead at an airport when he was a kid though, as it might mean something tragic.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    2. Re:Scares me by i.r.id10t · · Score: 1

      I'm more worried about an accident... I mean, as many of us learned to program, who hasn't accidentally created a unending loop, etc?

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
    3. Re:Scares me by E++99 · · Score: 1

      this is what will kill off all humans on the planet before the end of my natural life.

      Are you saying... you're not human? Or are you planning on dying off-planet?
    4. Re:Scares me by iaminthetrunk · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Once you have cheap, easy engineering of microbial life, then all it takes is exactly ONE maniac to design a transmittable disease that will wipe out everyone. Once you have cheap, easy engineering of microbial life, you also have thousands of people competent to work on cures, genetic enhancements, immune system upgrades, rapid turn-around vaccines, and so forth. Computers and programming languages didn't just produce script kiddies, they produces all the other benefits of computers and programming languages, from security researches to flash games to robotic assembly lines to the pending promise of hand-held real-time universal translation widgets. Genetic engineering brings extension of lifespan, curing of disease, creation of new life forms, preservation of extinct species, etc. Not that bio-bricks silver bullet such stuff, anymore than the first room-sized ENIAC instantly snapped universal translation into existence. Just that your alarmism sees a narrow range. If you can't keep the technology contained, one of the most rational things to do is make a large pool of benevolent people competent in the technology, to counteract the impact of the nutty minority who will attempt to misuse it.

      Designing a disease like this would be almost pathetically simple with the right tools. Design it to be extremely infectious, but with an incubation period of 10 years before it starts killing. The bio-bricks will make it easy to test that it works on humans, incubating for 10 years, eh? Or will you be testing it in a petri dish and presuming you can mod it defect-free to both work in humans and incubate for 10 years, setting aside the hilarity of how difficult such an incubation effect would be. Not even influenza or ebola kills 99 percent of people, incidentally, but don't let that stop your alarmist hyperbole. 10 years from now, I definately expect your genome will be decodable on the cheap inside a day, and we'll be well along in decoding a whole host of symbiotic gut bacteria and bloodstream chemicals and so forth. Most probably we'll be busy working on tech to monitor your blood chemistry real-time, and thinking about regularly, say, decoding the state and composition of your internal fauna on routine doctor visits. Remaining undetected 10 years from now seems to be more challenging than you breezily think it will be. A majority of script kiddies attacks from 10 years ago are negligible now, security layers and techniques advanced.

      If any technology should be tightly controlled, this is it. Technologies should be appropriately regulated with a judicious rational eye, as we do with dozens of technologies already. There's a delicious irony in yourself or someone you like dying from some variant flavor of disease years hence, because you were too alarmist to let me study the proteans and genetics of those cells as an intellectual hobby and contribute something worthwild, and I programmed flash games instead. If anything ought to be more tightly regulated, incidentally, it's parenting. I could do with less nutty people in the world to misuse technology in the first place. -evoke
      --
      "The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of moral crisis, preserved their neutrality." -Dante
    5. Re:Scares me by maxume · · Score: 1

      You seem awfully sure that it is even possible to create a highly infectious disease with a long incubation period and insane lethality. HIV is ~1.5 out or 3(because it isn't all that infectious and the lethality keeps on going down). I can't think of anything else that has a long incubation period and satisfies more than about 1/2 of the other criteria.

      Note that for the most part, you don't get sick because the bacteria living in and around you are quite well adapted to the environment(s) you provide and make it difficult for other organisms with less adapted biologies to come on in and take over.

      I mean, if I invented magic, I could turn the Earth into a birthday cake, but I'm not really a global threat, am I?

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    6. Re:Scares me by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 1

      Once you have cheap, easy engineering of microbial life, you also have thousands of people competent to work on cures, genetic enhancements, immune system upgrades, rapid turn-around vaccines, and so forth.

      That's assuming people know the doomsday virus even exists. By the time everyone starts dying, it's too late. Civilization would fall if that many people died at once -- including power plants. It's always easier to destroy than to create. Just because we have the atomic bomb doesn't mean we have "rapid turn around defenses" to it.

      Or will you be testing it in a petri dish and presuming you can mod it defect-free to both work in humans and incubate for 10 years.

      You would create an animal version and test the timer mechanism for a shorter time.

      setting aside the hilarity of how difficult such an incubation effect would be.

      Difficult? This is engineering we're talking about. The body already has a lot of timer mechanisms, such as the ones that limit the number of cell divisions. What, you don't think biology is rather flexible?

      Not even influenza or ebola kills 99 percent of people, incidentally, but don't let that stop your alarmist hyperbole.

      Sheesh, now you're just being silly. There are many poisons that kill people with 100% reliability. You know why diseases don't tend to? Because they burn themselves out too quickly and can't spread quickly enough. But, once again, we're talking about an intelligently designed disease specifically engineered to hide, and then kill.

      Are you seriously arguing that it's impossible to design a bioweapon with a delayed fuse? Yeah, and mankind will never fly because flapping wings are too complex.

      --
      Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
  25. whoooaa by kyc · · Score: 1


      When you read it, it seems like some genious kid could be able to create dinasour like creautures out of a bunch of fundamental molecules.

      I think open-source like genetic engineering must be much more different. Though being no expert on this, I really don't believe what they can synthesize is not much more than the simple (and boring) organic molecules, I needed to memorize in high-school. ( Yeah, they were teaching organic chemistry in high-school back then)

    If they were so cabaple of playing with the source code of biology, I bet they could have beaten the little, evil, less than a bacteria-sized virus called the HIV.

    --
    There's plenty of room at the bottom! Richard P. Feynmann
    1. Re:whoooaa by geekoid · · Score: 1

      Of course they taught it when you were in high school...it was still new!

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  26. A biohazard waiting to happen. by ubergeek65536 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What happens when someone uses the wrong block in the right spot by accident? Giving the tools to people that aren't able to understand the possible side effects could be dangerous. Not everyone has a containment level 3 facility in their basement.

    1. Re:A biohazard waiting to happen. by Bones3D_mac · · Score: 1

      If we continually lived in constant fear of the unknown, we'd still be living in caves (assuming we even survived at all...), completely ignorant of even the simplest things we now take for granted. (Fire, anyone?)

      That much aside, it's often an unavoidable necessity to tread into unknown territory because our survival might eventually depend on one of us to take the first step before someone else does. Surely you learned about Mutually Assured Destruction in school, right? It doesn't quite work if only one party is holding all the cards.

      --


      8==8 Bones 8==8
  27. It was just a joke! by greg_barton · · Score: 2, Funny

    My daughter was born three months ago. My wife jokes, "She won't be allowed to date until she's 25!" I always add, "Yeah, and not until after she gets a PhD in Programmable Genetics..."

    I was only half kidding. Now I'm not kidding at all. :)

  28. SDK by garlicbready · · Score: 1

    cool when can we expect the human SDK?

    will I be able to upload my own designs for a new Leg to the git tree
    hey for that matter build your own git
    (english reference there)

    1. Re:SDK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your statement just doesn't "gitter done" for me could you please explain. (Southern American reference there)

    2. Re:SDK by Alotau · · Score: 1

      cool when can we expect the human SDK? I came pre-packaged with half of the human SDK. Luckily my wife has the other half. The tools are crude and the development cycle is quite long.
    3. Re:SDK by jamstar7 · · Score: 1

      The practice runs are kinda fun tho...

      --
      Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
  29. Yeah... by eno2001 · · Score: 1

    ...this will stay legal for what? Five minutes? As soon as they're successful, this is going to be locked up tighter than a drum (as an old employer used to say). There won't be any namby pamby warm and fuzzy open community feelings for long. I see the end result being collusion by big pharma and their de-balled government lackies to outlaw this. Especially if it would mean "illegitimate" alternatives to big pharma. The companies that make medicine today aren't here to cure you. They're here to make a profit. And it that means making you and keeping you just sick enough to keep coming back for more, you can bet they won't want competition from people who actually might have your best interests at heart.

    --
    -"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
  30. Maybe a mixed metaphor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It occurred to me that maybe this is a classic case of a mixed metaphor, and that circletimessquare meant "putting the genie back in the bottle" instead of "putting Pandora back in the box."

  31. Re:Ha! I love it ; (you cannot be serious) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I am close to this field of "synthetic biology", but unfortunately BioBricks (and other such efforts) are not as impressive as some might believe them to be. They are not 'serious biology', yet. What they are excellent for is recruiting more students to biology, which is really great! Really, a lot of these "bricks" came from DNA plasmids people have been using for years. Some of them are just being rounded up and rebranded (as "genetic Legos" with names like BBa_J06504, or BBa_J06505). Think about it for a moment. There is nothing truly groundbraking here. This effort is sort of like rounding up all the crumbs on the table, throwing in some skittles, and then with your recipe being able to bake your own unique fruitcake. The end product may or may not be palatable. (And if you choose to invite Chef Ramsey for a tasting, first he'll ask you if you're serious - then he'll smack you over the head).

    I think your genetics prof had something else in mind when he was looking 40 years into the future.

    P.S. BTW - I am not your genetics prof. I do believe, however, that 40 or even 20 years from now, biology will be even more exciting than it is now.

  32. About time too... by syrinje · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...I, for one, welocme our synthetic Bio-Lego-lical overlords!

    --
    See that long UID - that's what you get for lurking too long
  33. Ethanol?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't they already have cells that can produce ethanol? I believe they are called "yeast"...

  34. Re:Ha! I love it ; (you cannot be serious) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I too work in this field, and 20-40 years off isn't a bad guess for when we will be able to start doing really cool stuff.

    And like the other anon said, these bricks aren't that amazing yet.
    Expressing fusion proteins off a plasmid is not new.

  35. power, man by circletimessquare · · Score: 1

    there's no reason to make bottle rockets

    there's no reason to make napster

    there's no reason to master electronic sampling in music

    do you really think a teenager finds nothing compelling about a quick and easy way to make any chemical he wants in his gym locker?

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  36. And now it's time for Frank Talk with a Frankie by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 1

    Angel: This is Angel.
    Angel: This is Angel.
    Angel & Angel: We are the Android Sisters. What is your question?
    Caller: All of reality exists in our minds. Is that true?
    Angel: What is your intelligence rating?
    Caller: I'm classified as a 5.5555.
    Angel: You understand we only speak to you on the level you can comprehend.
    Caller: I appreciate that.
    Angel: For those of you watching out there, adjust your I-T rating to...
    Angel & Angel: 5.5555. What is your question?
    Caller: I already asked it.
    Angel: What is your question?
    Caller: I said, I already asked it.
    Angel & Angel: What is your question?
    [beat]
    Angel & Angel: What is your question?
    Caller: All right, I want to know if reality is in my mind or is it out there? I mean, what if it's all in my mind? I mean, change my mind I could change reality: right; wrong; what? I'm confused.
    Angel & Angel: Dear Confused.
    Angel: Briefly, reality is merely what everyone agrees is real.
    Angel: What everyone agrees is not real does not exist.
    Caller: Who programmed you?
    Angel & Angel: Who programmed you?
    Caller: How should I know? Everyone. I don't know. I'm still confused.
    Angel & Angel: Dear Still Confused.
    Angel: You are confusing the symbol for reality.
    ["Reality"]
    Angel: Money is a good example.
    ["Money"]
    Caller: What about money? I like money.
    ["Money money"]
    Angel: I will use two pieces of paper as an example.
    Angel: Can you see this?
    Caller: I see one piece of paper. The other is money.
    Angel & Angel: Two pieces of paper!
    Caller: What?
    Angel: Here are two pieces of paper.
    Angel: Both the same size.
    Angel: Both just paper.
    ["Paper"]
    Angel: Humans are obsessed with money.
    ["Money money money money"]
    Caller: Not all humans, just some of us. Most of us.
    Angel: One piece of paper is worth 500 Solar Credits.
    Angel: The other is worthless. Not even worth a Solar Centavo.
    Angel: Do you know why?
    Caller: Sure. One is a piece of money, the other is a piece of paper.
    Angel & Angel: They are both paper.
    Caller: Yeah. Right.
    Angel: One has been...
    Angel & Angel: ...Blessed...
    Angel: ...by the Treasury Wizards.
    Angel: The other has not.
    Caller: That's it?
    ["That's it."]
    Angel: The symbol is controlling your mind.
    Caller: Mmm. I see.
    Angel: Oh, our time is up.
    Angel: This is Angel.
    Angel: This is Angel.
    Angel: We are the Android Sisters. Until next time.

    --
    Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
  37. dude, i don't even capitalize or use periods by circletimessquare · · Score: 1

    why the hell do you think your spelling/ grammar/ greek mythology nazi ways are going to impress me?

    why the hell do you grammar nazis try so hard?

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:dude, i don't even capitalize or use periods by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      why the hell do you grammar nazis try so hard?

      Because idiots like you communicate poorly, and we are trying to help you to communicate better. It is a Quixotic mission in your case, but we are selfless and tireless.

    2. Re:dude, i don't even capitalize or use periods by LionMage · · Score: 1

      You proceed from the false assumption that someone is trying to impress you. This may come across as harsh, but... you're not someone worthy of impressing. I was merely trying to help you out, since you seem to have trouble communicating effectively. That, and I happen to love my language, and my cultural heritage, though you seem to have respect for neither. So, what we have here is an impasse -- you refuse to change your ways, and people like me are not going to stop critiquing you. Either you learn to develop thicker skin, or learn better communication skills. Complaining, however, is highly unlikely to stop all of us. In fact, it might even make you a bigger target. I certainly have no intention of "changing my ways" because, well, I happen to have a fetish for saying what I mean and respecting my ancestors. (Yeah, I have Greek ancestry.)

      I can forgive lack of capitalization and poor punctuation. I can forgive a lot of things. But using the wrong word crosses a threshold for me, and mangled metaphors just put your post over the top. So, that's why I responded. It's not a personal attack on you.

  38. This is not correct by davidwr · · Score: 1
    US Currency has not been backed by gold or any other metal since the '30s.

    From The US Treasury Web Site:

    Federal Reserve notes are not redeemable in gold, silver or any other commodity, and receive no backing by anything This has been the case since 1933. The notes have no value for themselves, but for what they will buy. In another sense, because they are legal tender, Federal Reserve notes are "backed" by all the goods and services in the economy. They are backed by collateral, some but not all of which are gold certificates:

    Congress has specified that a Federal Reserve Bank must hold collateral equal in value to the Federal Reserve notes that the Bank receives. This collateral is chiefly gold certificates and United States securities.
    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
    1. Re:This is not correct by Grimholtt · · Score: 1

      Well there ya go... I blame it on my government school eductation. Thanks for the correction.

  39. Sorry Guys, This Is NOT a Threat by Pugio · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't often post, but most of the comments here are completely wrong. I'm a bioengineer and have been following this project since its inception. Some points:

    - This technology is NOT any more effective or dangerous than "traditional" genetic engineering. You will not be able to make a unicorn, dragon, or some unholy dog/cat combination.

    - Building an Über Death Virus from this takes just as much skill, equipment, and knowledge as it would using standard tools. First, the BioBricks are made for use inside of a living bacterial organism. They will not work without a cell to operate in. A virus, by contrast, is just a specialized collection of proteins that is not in any way alive - something very very different from BioBricks.

    "But what about a killer bacteria?" I hear you ask. Well, while technically possible, it's not easy to make something that can live comfortably in our bodies. To a foreign bacteria, our bodies are a fortress crawling with guards and death traps. It has taken nature millions of years to develop microbes capable of harming us (as our immune systems have also grown to combat each new threat.) The key point here is that, to create a NEW bacterial threat, one would have to be very well versed in biology and genetic engineering. What's more, for someone of this skill level, it would be much easier to create such a bacteria using standard biological techniques, not BioBricks.

    These BioBricks are incredibly cool and powerful, within their problem domain. Making bacteria do things is very different from giving them the ability to successfully harm our bodies and spread to other hosts.

    1. Re:Sorry Guys, This Is NOT a Threat by Kingrames · · Score: 1

      "You will not be able to make a unicorn, dragon, or some unholy dog/cat combination."

      aww.

      Will we at least be able to create a superplague using the chinese knock-off?

      --
      If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
    2. Re:Sorry Guys, This Is NOT a Threat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "You will not be able to make a unicorn, dragon, or some unholy dog/cat combination."

      Wait does this mean that making holy cat/dog combinations is still an option. Sweet time to stock up on holy water.

    3. Re:Sorry Guys, This Is NOT a Threat by Rutulian · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I wasn't quite sure what this was when I first read it, and there isn't a lot of technical information on their website (at least within easy reach). Basically, from what I can gather, it looks like they have simplified methods for making custom bacterial strains. So whereas before, if you wanted E. coli to overproduce "your favorite protein" you had to make a knockout, and then construct a plasmid, and then transform, and then cross your fingers and hoped it worked the first time otherwise you had to try different plasmids/promoters/etc, now you can grab a couple of BioBricks and be fairly certain it will work the first time, which is kind of neat (yes, that was a run-on sentence).

      This doesn't allow you, however, to make custom drugs/substances or engineer radical new viruses and proteins, which the summary seems to imply. Basically, this doesn't allow you to do anything you can't already do with conventional techniques, so if you want to express membrane proteins, best of luck to you! The problem with custom drugs is that we are beginning to understand how some of the gene clusters work, in the case of the polyketides, but we aren't capable yet of making custom gene clusters that create custom polyketides (at least complex ones). When we do get there, though, this will be neat technology for streamlining and scaling-up the process such that it could be useful in industrial applications.

  40. I for one welcome our new biological overlords by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

    Well, I would just like to say that I for one welcome our new biological overlords, and the people who created them from easy to use kits to wipe out our human species.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  41. Re:US Currency is more than paper, it's food by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1


    But what if we use our Bio Block Building Set to create a paper-eating organism?

    Than it would be based on a rapidly consumed mythical piece of paper and your currency would truly devalue in a very organic kind of way.

    Have to engineer something so it can handle those little metallic strips, tho.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  42. Learn to spell. by skrolle2 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    It's "lego" not "legos" you stupid colonials.

  43. that was a rhetorical question by circletimessquare · · Score: 2, Informative

    i understand the answer already

    the truth is, your mind is brittle and inflexible

    the average person on the street can decipher text messages, slang, etc., without any trouble or mental fuzziness

    however, there exists a certain inflexible segment of small-mined, petty, and mediocre people who believe it is somehow more important to focus on the color of the wrapping paper rather than gift

    that's a metaphor for valuing cosmetics over content. it means i think your mind is shallow. can you comprehend a metaphor dear autistic turd? or not until i rigidly adhere to strunk & white's elements of style will your dim mind whir and click the meaning into place?

    in which case, it is with PLEASURE that my poor formatting trips up such brittle minds. consider it a useful filter on my part: when i confront grammar nazis, i am ENCOURAGED to format poorly based on your brittle reactions. i would choose not to continue communicating with minds that work like yours. and my poor formatting achieves that. magical, huh?

    your feeble mind's inability to get over that which normal folk have no trouble digesting mentally is a loud and clear signal for me to ignore you, continue on my way, and be happy brittle feeble minds like yours are tripped up and sent packing from the conversation

    you'll notice that was a run on sentence. you'll notice i don't fucking care, and am happy not to care, considering the type of person who does care. i feel liberated from mediocrity by ignoring your concerns

    capisce, you useless feeble dim bulb? oh, and by the way, if you're still reading at this point: IF YOU GOT THROUGH THAT MUCH NEGATIVE BULLSHIT, AS BADLY FORMATTED AS IT WAS, AND YOU'RE STILL READING, WHY. THE. FUCK. DO. YOU. FUCKING. CARE. SO. MUCH. ABOUT. GRAMMAR. YOU. FUCKING. BRITTLE. MINDED. TURD?

    xoxoxoxoxoxox

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:that was a rhetorical question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Despite your style, your posts exude moral clarity and clear thinking, which is why I friended you.

    2. Re:that was a rhetorical question by Non-Huffable+Kitten · · Score: 1

      The trait might be somewhat autistic, but I think you are unfair to say that people with autistic traits are "small-minded", "mediocre" and "shallow" (well, it's not clear whether you are generalizing to all of them. Sorry if I misread you.)

      I don't understand why you get so mad about this... so some people may be obsessive about details like this, that still doesn't automatically make them stupid or evil. There are much worse things... That you get so unfriendly about it suggests to me that this could be a slight case of "we hate in others what we hate in ourselves". But I don't know you at all so that's just a wild guess.

      Anyway, not everyone who is bothered by lack of punctuation etc. is obsessive about it. It does make your text a bit harder to read even for "normal" people. I agree that formatting doesn't matter if you are saying something really interesting. But I don't know in advance whether some comment is interesting, and since I have to filter what I read online anyway, I'd rather read something more readable.

      Also look at it like this, you only have to spend the formatting effort once, but it saves people "deciphering" effort many times.

      --
      Medium cat is MEDIUM.
    3. Re:that was a rhetorical question by LionMage · · Score: 1

      First off, I wanted to point out that the Anonymous Coward you're responding to is not me. I never would have used the word "idiot." Also, for the record, I was not responding to formatting of any kind. I was responding to your choice of words and to your mangled metaphor.

      That said... it is unwarranted to blindly assume someone has autism, Asperger's, or any other sort of disorder. It's even worse that you tar all such people with the brush of mediocrity and small-mindedness.

  44. Cue the Irony Maiden: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sick, sick, sick...
    the Number of the Yeast...



    OK, that was st00p3d.
    Going anonymous with this one. ;)

  45. you sound annoyed by circletimessquare · · Score: 1

    someone should make sure you stay away from lab equipment

    (if you don't laugh at that comment, which was the intention, then perhaps it's a serious comment after all)

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  46. Tailor made diseases by nurb432 · · Score: 1

    Hey, i guess we all gotta go sometime. Might as well make it child's play to wipeout 1/2 the planet from one 'oops' .

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  47. What?! by Silverlock · · Score: 1

    Wait.. back up. "Synthetic biologists"? Who cares about some kit, they're already making synthetic biologists? I assume these biologists can then make more of themselves, so...

    I, for one, welcome our new self-replicating biologist overlords.

  48. Shapes and systems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So how do cells know where they're at and what
    direction to go?

    I want to understand how shapes can be programmed.
    They clearly are, we are fromed a single cell and
    look at the uniformity of our shapes.
    Because I want to build an organic ship that
    would be put through a process to make it as
    hard as diamond. then add engine and go.
    Or a dragon.

  49. So if I want to build a tree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I would start with a root kit?

  50. kind of on the right path by circletimessquare · · Score: 2, Interesting

    the first teenage biohack will be vat-grown chicken mcnuggets to replace the real mcnuggets in their school cafeteria. this after 13 year old suzy mcqueasy visits a farm and it dawns on her for the first time where her hamburgers come from

    that's the kind of "less genocide" teenagers are concerned with

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  51. thank you by circletimessquare · · Score: 1

    rude unwelcome truth over placid pointless white lies

    that's my motto

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  52. From the Bill Gates of the Future... by tjstork · · Score: 1

    (a parody of his famous 197x letter to people copying MS Basic)...

    Hey you people!

    Stop ripping off my cells! It's our intellectual property, copyright law applies, and we will sue the hell out of you!

    --
    This is my sig.
  53. Leaves as legal tender by davidwr · · Score: 1

    Shortly after landing on this planet, our early ancestors declared leaves legal tender, proving once and for all that money really does grow on trees. This lead to an inflation problem. However, last I checked they were embarking on a deforestation program to limit the money supply.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  54. Tough Questions by Atmchicago · · Score: 1

    I was a participant in the iGEM competition this year (Davidson/Missouri Western, check out our wiki). Some people are talking about the potential dangers these BioBricks have if they are publically available and easy to use. First, it might be important to clarify what they are. Four restriction enzyme sites on plasmids allow the stitching together of DNA sequences into any desired configuration. The registry contains hundreds (soon to be thousands) of parts that can be put together and dropped into cells. Most of these parts, though, already existed in nature. People have just thought of new ways of using them together.

    There are no easy answers to the questions about the dangers of engineering life, but we have to think of the benefits of making science accessible and affordable. If you look at the projects these predominantly undergraduate teams have done, they all have so much creativity and show the great potential for engineering life. Teams have worked on developing cures for diseases (HIV, look at Slovenia's project), and this is only within the first couple years of the competition. Imagine what ten years will bring!

    Furthermore, the rapid adoption and development of computers was a huge worry to the United States government. The USSR could develop nuclear weapons much more effectively and quickly with computers (think 8086's) than with pen and paper, and we were trying our hardest to prevent them from getting the technology. And yet we see that the benefits of open science in an open society are tremendous, as the internet has permanently shaped how we live in a positive way. There are risks out there, but science marches on, and we have to instead focus on what we can do to accept change and how to use it to our advantage.

    --

    You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.

  55. Sewers become giant bioproduct generators by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Will our sewers become giant bioproduct generators..? the weirdest fumes come up from my sewer, different every day, like someone is doing experiments with a free flushable fuel source

  56. Why design? Can't evolution do this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm confused - why are we trying to design biological systems? Can't we just apply the well known laws of evolution to direct existing life forms to do what we want?

    Will it be possible to distinguish designed life forms from those that arose via abiogenesis and naturalistic evolutionary processes?

  57. Open Source for biology by Yvanhoe · · Score: 1

    Call me a corporate drone full of lobby money if you wish but... Isn't making a easy to use open source devkit for biology akin to giving away a SDK to make computer virus in a world where all users are locked with an unpatched Windows ME on an unfiltered internet connection ?

    --
    The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
  58. You sure it wasnt fractional lending? by Colin+Smith · · Score: 1

    People who want to bring gold back seem to have forgotten the problems it caused. Really? Was that the gold or was that the banks issuing more currency that there was gold? i.e. The fractional nature of lending.
    --
    Deleted
  59. The US currency is DEBT, it isn't paper by Colin+Smith · · Score: 1

    Very little of the US currency is paper and coin. The vast majority (something like 95%) of it is debt.

    --
    Deleted
  60. You in particular are already beaten by brunes69 · · Score: 1

    You want to kill tens of millions of people? Pick up a bunch of poisonous crap from random home depots around the country, gather it all up in some vans, and dump it all in a bunch of $RANDOM_SMALL_CITY water supplies across the country at the same time, the small cities who don't have budget or infrastructure go guard those supplies. There you go - millions dead from common household materials, and all you have to know how to do is drive a truck and not be an idiot. You don't have to have genetically engineered bio-warfare materials to kill people.

    If someone who is anywhere near intelligent wants to kill a bunch of people, like REALLY WANTS TO, they're going to do it. Nothing you or me or the government can do will stop them. All the government can do is stop the idiots and people who have other more specific aims than "kill a ton of random people".

    Usually that aim is to strike mass panic in the populace. Alarmist people like you are the real problem. People like you have already let terrorists win. They don't even have to do any more damage, you are obviously already terrorized to the point where even the thought of something going wrong holds you back from truly progressive ideas, like this one.

  61. autism/aspergers is a social deficit by circletimessquare · · Score: 1

    and you wonder why it's annoying? a social deficit is a social deficit. this is not an observation that compels me to hold the autistic's/ asperger's hand and be understanding, this is an observation that compels the autistic/ aspergers to understand they are out of line and out of place. this is a comment board, not a speech pathology center

    the brittle feeble emphasis on grammar interferes with proper social communication. an obsession with grammar belies a mind out of touch with what is important in a conversation. if you are trying to have a conversation with someone about biotech, and they constantly change the subject to your sentence structure, the only proper response is SHUT THE FUCK UP

    am i supposed to be understanding? am i supposed to indulge the socially malformed and coddle them? "oh yes, my sentence structure, let me fix that." "oh yes, i misspelled that word, let me fix that."

    that's giving the brittle mind the wrong idea: that their mediocrity is relevant. it feeds the wrong idea. it is far more useful for me to tell them what every socially well-formed individual is thinking: SHUT THE FUCK UP. NO ONE CARES ABOUT THAT

    and i love the fact that you replied to me after absorbing my post above. it was rude, hostile, and poorly formatted. hey, twatstain: PROVE MY POOR FORMATTING IS AN IMPEDIMENT TO COMMUNICATION AND STOP FUCKING RESPONDING TO ME. OTHERWISE, YOU UNDERMINE YOUR ENTIRE ARGUMENT

    now if you will excuse me, it's 10 minutes to wapner. definitely, definitely, 10 minutes to wapner

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:autism/aspergers is a social deficit by Non-Huffable+Kitten · · Score: 1

      Pretty ironic to have somone who flames in response to a level-headed response to a flame talk about social behaviour...

      --
      Medium cat is MEDIUM.
    2. Re:autism/aspergers is a social deficit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For someone who seems to have no tolerance for others with perceived social deficits, especially those who can't seem to help it (autistics, etc.), you seem to exude the very same social deficits you're railing about. Except yours are not of the obsessive-compulsive-about-language variety; yours are the I'm-too-cool-to-treat-other-human-beings-with-respect variety. That's pretty hypocritical.

      Want to bait someone? Call them a twatstain, and while you're at it, rave about how socially dysfunctional they are. Brilliant. Make sure to call someone with a mental disorder a turd for extra credit. Bonus points for assigning a mental disorder to someone (or several someones) without having a shred of proof that the label even applies.

  62. You are confusing currency with money by davidwr · · Score: 1

    Bank notes are currency.
    Shiny pieces of metal are coins.
    Money includes these as well as IOUs and even entries in a ledger book.

    If you deposing $100,000 in ACME bank, and ACME bank turns around and loans someone $200,000 so they can immediately deposit it into an account at ACME bank, we now have $300,000 floating around where there was only $100,000. Let's hope they don't all try to withdraw it all at once.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  63. you don't know me very well do you by circletimessquare · · Score: 1

    i'm a big fat ugly rude obnoxious disgusting happy proud troll

    so shut the fuck up and suck my dick, you fucking twat

    xoxoxoxoxox

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:you don't know me very well do you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, I think this calls for a concerted effort to spend some mod points... since circletimessquare clearly just conceded that he's a Troll, won't someone pitch in with the mod points and help correctly label his posts?

  64. batman? by chris231989 · · Score: 1

    Wasn't that the idea from the first batman movie??

  65. This is actually possible by Plazmid · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately, this is actually possible, as there are currently toothpastes on the market that contain KNO3(or potassium nitrate to all the non-chemies). Fortunately, they do not contain enough for it to be a problem.