Hacking With Synthetic Biology 135
blackbearnh writes "If you've gotten tired of hacking firewalls or cloud computing, maybe it's time to try your hand with DNA. That's what Reshma Shetty is doing with her Doctorate in Biological Engineering from MIT. Apart from her crowning achievement of getting bacteria to smell like mint and bananas, she's also active in the developing field of synthetic biology and has recently helped found a company called Gingko BioWorks which is developing enabling technologies to allow for rapid prototyping of biological systems. She talked to O'Reilly Radar recently about the benefits and potential dangers of easy biological design, why students should be hacking wetware, and what's involved in setting up your own lab to slice genes."
Doesn't this sound like... (Score:5, Interesting)
Fine, I'll think of the children (Score:5, Interesting)
Biological tinkering has me concerned because we're talking about self-replicating systems. Realistically, we're not going to see nanite swarms or grey goo eating the whole planet as is feared in science fiction. Nanites have to operate within the same laws of physics as anything else and are unlikely to be spectacularly and magically more robust than organics. Hell, at such a small scale they would be more likely to be custom-designed organics.
That being said, organics ranging from viruses to bacteria to algae can cause quite a bit of trouble in our ecosystem. My only concern is that we might create some sort of blight in the lab that gets out. Now I'm not saying she's deliberately working with stuff that's intentionally meant to be lethal like the biological warfare guys in Russia but even those guys who knew they were messing with absolutely lethal bugs still made mistakes and had accidental releases.
Given that we won't know that something is really bad for us in the environment until after it gets out and starts doing terrible things, I would like to suggest we operate with an abundance of caution here. It wouldn't take an accidental flesh-eating bacteria to ruin everyone's day. The next corn smut or citrus canker could not kill a single person and cost the economy billions.
Re:I think she's on to something (Score:4, Interesting)
or produce the needed vitamins for the human body. it's been tried with limited success... the probelm seems to be getting the bacteria to take hold in the gut rather than just expelled from the body. the field is called probiotics but requires some engineering so it's a bit of both fields. imagine making enough vitamin D not to ever have rickets or vitamin C to prevent scurvy or even destroying toxins like Melamine. Which by the way is why cows can do ok with melamine in their diet, their gut bacteria breakdown melamine and produce useful nitrogen containing molecules using it as a nitrogen source.
Enough with the doom saying, i want my cures. (Score:2, Interesting)
Rapid prototyping of biological systems, if it could be done as easier as a prototyping plastic, would be wonderful. Imagine a new disease discovered and resistant human cell/DNA, being manufactured within a couple of weeks. Doubt we'll get that though. What we might get at best is a new economy segment based on brewing, with genetically engineered yeasts be produce pharmaceuticals and other chemicals cheaply. Yeast is the ideal for the purpose because is grows so quickly, and is used in enclosed environments.
Re:Doesn't this sound like... (Score:3, Interesting)
I would also like to see these http://www.genpets.com/index.php [genpets.com]
That has to be the most shocking thing I have ever seen. I almost couldn't judge how serious it was until someone called my attention. Im sure its just a plot to get page hits but... WTF?? After the shock wheres off, you realize how fake it looks.
It's less about "evil" as about "safeguards" (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think anyone cringes at exploring technology per se, but at doing so without much safeguards if any. The potential for mass harm is great, and while nobody proposes to outlaw it as such, it would be nice if it stayed only in proper labs and you at least had to tell someone your idea before even starting on it. You know, sorta like the XKCD idea of having your comment read out loud to you so you get a second chance to spot if it sounds bloody stupid.
Basically the same as: I'm not against electricity or nuclear power, but if the neighbour's kid managed to buy ten kilos of plutonium for his science experiment... I'd _worry_.
And here we're talking about something which has historically caused more harm than a nuke before. E.g.,
- repeated smallpox outbreaks seem to have been what weakened the Roman empire in the first centuries AD, to the point of near collapse of its economy and army. (Not to mention making everyone disillusioned with the old gods and ways.) There are outbreaks that are estimated to have killed up to 30% of the empire's total population. _Thousands_ of people died daily in Rome alone, for decades straight. (Though later Justinian's Plague killed about ten thousands a day in Constantinople.)
- ask the american indians how well smallpox worked for them later
- bubonic plague outbursts killed a majority of Europe's population back then, with mortality as high as 75% per outbreak in some cities (though not all.)
- we had a killer flu as late as after the first world war
Knowing that everyone can concoct their own cross between flu and aids with just a couple of relevant genes from the noro-virus for extra flavour, doesn't exactly make me sleep easier.
And before someone goes, "omg, but now we have antibiotics": yeah, but curing viruses is still where we suck. Royally.
And at least theoretically it would be possible to concoct even bacterias which don't respond to antibiotics that well. The easy to explain version is to just start from VISA/VRSA (think MRSA with extra resistances) and give it a gene so it multiplies faster. But for something more advanced for true gurus, why not swap out the proteins attacked by the antibiotics in the first place? E.g., give it the ribosome from an animal cell, and you just rendered a whole class of antibiotics impotent at a more fundamental level than normal bacterial resistances. Might need to recode a couple of other proteins for it to work, but that's why I've said it's for gurus only.
Or get creative. Make a bacteria or virus that can live equally well on plants _and_ animals. Now that'll be a royal pain in the arse to completely root out, and it can safely kill its hosts without making itself extinct.
Re:Hacking Life Danger (Score:3, Interesting)
Gunpowder and fire are not likely to wipe out the human race.
Nuclear weapons can wipe out the human race, but only if unleashed in massive quantities or in quantities sufficient to cause devastating climate change like nuclear winter. Someday, some whackjob is going to detonate a nuclear device, but the whackjob won't wipe out the whole human race in the process. Biological weapons can do just that.
Many people can't keep their hands off weapons. They love them. And what gets made eventually gets used.
More than smells (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Doesn't this sound like... (Score:2, Interesting)
Gel electrophoresis using drinking straws:
http://maradydd.livejournal.com/417631.html [livejournal.com]
DiYBio Club:
http://io9.com/5014059/a-homebrew-club-for-biogeeks [io9.com]
Home-brew science is becoming more possible.