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Photoshop for DNA

Posted by Zonk on Thu Jun 02, 2005 09:55 AM
from the mix-your-own-nematode dept.
Biotech Science
pafischer writes "Forbes is reporting on a Biotech startup company trying to make DNA manipulation as easy as Photoshop. From the article: 'The goal is to move from having to merely tweak the proteins that are used as biotech drugs to being able to design them, even taking material from multiple organisms and using them to create new, functional genes.'"
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  • Oh No! (Score:5, Funny)

    by justforaday (560408) on Thursday June 02 2005, @09:56AM (#12704694)
    Judging from the quality of some of the Photoshopped images I've seen out there, I really don't want to see what people will create with this...
    • You'll just get people having a competition for who can manipulate the most amusing biological result.

      Although I can't say that was much different than the goals of my friends in high school bio class.

    • DNA?? What on earth does the National Dyxlesia Association have to do with Photoshop???
    • "Judging from the quality of some of the Photoshopped images I've seen out there, I really don't want to see what people will create with this..."

      And with the clone tool I made... a monkey with four asses. Huh.
  • if this is true then they're probably gonna need this neat photoshop plugin i just found...

    Plugin name: DNA (deoxyribose nucleic acid): "The genetic material of inheritance, undoubtedly has the most well-known molecular structure of all time. This tutorial describes how to make it."

    http://www.nextdesigns.net/modules.php?name=Photo s hop_Tutorials&file=dna [nextdesigns.net]

  • Plugins! (Score:4, Funny)

    by jolyonr (560227) on Thursday June 02 2005, @09:57AM (#12704704) Homepage
    It's going to be fun writing plugins for this!

    Ultra-Sharp-Teeth Plugin

    Breathe Underwater Plugin

    Bigger Breasts Plugin
    Jolyon

  • lets hope... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2005, @09:58AM (#12704711)
    that those tards at fark don't get ahold of this program.
  • Mark me as a FOB (Fan of Bill), but kudos to him and his foundation for their contribution to science....
    • That'd be even worse -- MSPaint for DNA... *shudder*
    • Mark me as a FOB (Fan of Bill), but kudos to him and his foundation for their contribution to science...

      Of course, he has a motive. He's donating money to help develop a user-friendly gene manipulation tool in hopes that it will cut into the market of the Open Source gene manipulation. Then, when people become dependent on the new gene manipulation, Microsoft will buy the company and merge it with their next version of windows, leaving geeks as the only ones doing gene manipulation the old way (by hand
      • I don't know...a lot of the super-super rich are very generous.

        It's been that way since the first super-super rich.

        Ever heard of Carnagie Melon university? Or Carnagie hall? Vanderbilt? And yet these men were called robber barons.

        The list of generous donations goes on and on for the super-rich.

        It's still not as big a sacrifice as me donating $5 to a local charity.

        Also, does the good they do outweigh the harm they do to society? Doubtful. It's equally doubtful for most super-rich men. I think it's
        • Also, does the good they do outweigh the harm they do to society? Doubtful. It's equally doubtful for most super-rich men. I think it's a way to ease their conscience about all the horrible things they've done.

          I'd be interested to hear how you think Microsoft's antitrust violations are more significant than the hundreds of millions of dollars the B&M Gates foundation donates to AIDS research, education, health initiatives, and technology.

          I mean, I'm sure you hate Bill with a passion, but the causes t

  • bad article summary from bad article title (Score:5, Informative)

    by geoffspear (692508) * on Thursday June 02 2005, @09:59AM (#12704725) Homepage
    The title of the linked article is the only part that even mentions Photoshop. Nowhere in the article does anyone claim that the process would be as easy as using Photoshop, or any other software programming.

    They do compare the advance in genetic manipulation to the difference between editing with Wite-Out and editing with a word processor, but that's what we call an analogy. They're not claiming that producing genes would be something anyone with no training can do with their home computer.

    • Curses! My plans for creating a race of radioactive supermen to conquer the world are foiled again.

      I'll get you next time, Mister Spear!!!

      *escapes in emergency hovercraft*
    • What the company seems to do is this:

      Currently, it's easy to 1) amplify large chunks of DNA verbatim and 2) change individual nucleotides. What is difficult is making large blocks of novel or heavily modified sequence, as it's expensive or impossible to synthesize them from nucleotides. Codon Devices seems to have a way to generate large chunks of customized sequence.

      How important that turns out to be, we'll see, but the company does have some really smart people behind it. Anyway, that's how I understand

      • Being able to make long synthetic DNA sequences would be immensely valuable. Right now practicality limits synthtic DNA to less than 100 bases. Genes are kilobases long even in bacteria. You need megabases for animals if you want to keep the introns intact (scary - a single animal gene can approach an entire bacterial genome in length).

        What the article lacks is one critical detail - how exactly they plan on doing all this.

        Imagine I started a new company designed to revolutionize computing, pointing out
  • The first time I read
    even taking material from multiple organisms and using them to create new, functional genes.

    I thought, "what do multiple orgasms have to do with DNA research?"

    • Re:Dislexia is such a drag (Score:4, Funny)

      by justforaday (560408) on Thursday June 02 2005, @10:03AM (#12704770)
      "what do multiple orgasms have to do with DNA research?"

      Quite a bit, actually... : p
    • I thought, "what do multiple orgasms have to do with DNA research?"

      Oh that's easy.

      Every woman will have not one G-spot but four, one of which will be at the back of the throat.

      Every man will have a unit built from horse DNA.

      And don't forget, everyone will be multi orgasmic!

      Reinforced back muscles to support the standard DD chest. (That's the small model)

      And of course, everyone will have a FANTASTIC rump.

      And then King George W Bush will get wind of this and have everyone's DNA rewritten to be more m

  • Gimp (Score:5, Funny)

    by suso (153703) * on Thursday June 02 2005, @10:02AM (#12704753) Homepage Journal
    How about making it as easy as Gimp instead. I like the interface better.

    *Ducks*
  • We'll make a GIMP for DNA, and rule the world! It'll run on more platforms too: all variants of primates, birds, farm animals, and Slashdot nerds. :)
  • "multiple organisms"

    I almost had a blockbusters [ukgameshows.com] moment there...

    What a suprise they removed the dumbass human-check. a-holes. Finished reading "Dumb ideas for dummies" have you?
  • Torres was trying to remove the brow ridges from her fetus using something like that.
  • They are writing a program to compute the results of manipulating genes. How does that relate to photoshop, other than there will probably be a picture you edit using your mouse. That is like saying Autocad and Photoshop are the same since you are creating pretty pictures in both.

    If they pull this off, it has way more to do with biology and math than the interface they use. Not to mention that even if this application simulates gene manipulation, they will still have to do the same thing by hand to tes
  • I can't begin to imagine the DNAShop contests that will happen on Fark [fark.com] or Something Awful [somethingawful.com]...
  • ...Imagine if you could photochop your DNA.

    X-ray vision here I come!!!
  • And as OS races to catch up with this new Photoshop feature can you imagine some of the freaks that will be created at people struggle with the GIMPs interface. Now I understand why they called it gimp.
  • Wake me when they've got it so it's as easy as Blender.

  • This is the (relatively) easy part (Score:3, Interesting)

    by G4from128k (686170) on Thursday June 02 2005, @10:19AM (#12704939)
    Designing DNA to create a given protein is no big deal. The hardest problem is figuring out how the new gene/protein will act inside the organism. Biological systems don't have a nice layered OSI model for what connects to what -- its like nearly everything is a global-accessible variable so side-effects are a real problem. New drugs require huge amounts of R&D in the testing phase, not the synthesis phase.

    I'd be more impressed if someone created an accurate in silico system for testing new drugs, rather than just designing new DNA sequences that MIGHT make useful new proteins that MIGHT make a useful new drug.

  • Ain't gonna happen (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nanoakron (234907) on Thursday June 02 2005, @10:35AM (#12705089)
    Hate to say it, but this sounds like a pipedream. They want to 'take the proteins and tweak them' an dthen have a computer program spit out the DNA required to make that protein.

    Well whoop-de-do. I'd like to make a computer that can generate wormholes. Doesn't mean it's going to happen.

    Firstly, protein modelling is notoriously complex. Remember folding@home? http://folding.stanford.edu/ [stanford.edu]
    That's right - hundreds of thousands of computers cracking the problem of 12 amino acid chains. That's an oligopeptide, sort of like a 'protein lite'. Real proteins are hundreds to thousands of amino acids long.

    IBM's Blue Gene supercomputers were even specifically designed with protein folding simulations in mind - read http://www.research.ibm.com/bluegene/ [ibm.com].

    So this company seems to be doing the following

    1 Come up with nifty, but blindingly obvious, idea
    2 Crack the age-old problem of accurately simulating protein folding
    3 Profit!!!

    It's just that step one is literally so obvious that you could ask a kid. And step 2 is so notoriously complex that I don't expect this company to amount to anything more than a plughole for research grants.

    -Nano.
  • Are you kidding? This has been shipping with the default load of MovieOS [everything2.com] for YEARS!

  • Now I can photoshop my dreamgirl *for real*

  • You can MAKE the celbrity yourself! For your very own :)
    • How about GIMP plugins, Open Source DNA manipulation?
    • I agree that genes should be left for geneticists, but when your compiler, debugger, and emmulator/simulator check for bad or even icky results, it might actually be fun to toy with genes, in an neat visual way.

      At least, I have fantasies about modifying vegetables, fruits, and bugs. I expect that wasps can be reengineered to produce complete reams of laser printer paper, even with a sealed paper wrapper. I expect that ants or cockroaches could be modified to clean your house, better than they do. I expect bacteria or other small folded shapes can be reengineered to spit-out carbon nanotubes, construct simple buildings, or eat trash and grow fuel-cell cartridges.

      All this hinges on us being able to effectively "file/print" DNA molecules. It's fun to watch technology accelerate, I am one excited geek.
    • "That's just what we needed -- a bunch of no-good self-proclaimed "genetic engineers" "creating" "new" genes by doing copy-paste hacks."

      Drew Endy. [mit.edu]

      If a professor of Biological Engineering from MIT isn't a genetic engineer, I'd like to know what is.
    • IIRC, an article (was it physorg, or nanoapex?) on genetic engineering software said that genetists used Microsoft Excel to analyse DNA sequences!

      (Repeat after me: Genetists, are, not, programmers.)
    • Well let's see: it has to grab your initial attention by being odd looking enough to be interesting and be annoying enough to immediately drive you away and wish you'd never seen it, while not allowing you to easily ignore it. Even when it's just out of sight, you know it's still there and it still bothers you.

      I think it must have something to do with the suggested link between light autism and hard core geekery.
    • If they come up with Frontpage for DNA, I just might become an investor.

      Then we'll have humans with an extra 30 useless chromosomes - so we'll have to wait until Dreamweaver DNA, DNA Tidy and DNA validator. :)

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