Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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.'"

1 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. 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.