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Biotech Science

Synthetic Life In The Lab 284

Posted by Hemos from the trying-to-build-it-all dept.
niktesla writes "Scientific American is carrying a story about sythetic life - genetic engineered "machines" made from DNA building blocks called "BioBricks". The goal is to produce a library of building blocks that can be assembled to give predictable results. Reminds me of the technology behind Blade Runner's replicants."
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Synthetic Life In The Lab More

Synthetic Life In The Lab

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  • Blade runner's replicants are part of a *story*! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Moderation abuser ( 184013 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @09:33AM (#8971669)
    There's this thing called fiction where you don't have to tell the truth, then there's this thing called science fiction where you can just make anything you like up.

    Then there's this thing called real life which just sucks because you can't make any of it up. Though someone should tell that to Tony Blair.

  • Saviour for people in need in of transplants? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BuddieFox ( 771947 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @09:33AM (#8971671)
    Probably stating the obvious here, but once this gets dependable and easy to form to different needs, "BioBricks" might spell the end of people dying due to lack of suitable organ donors.
    I think we will rather see that before we see any horror scenarios like "Blade Runner like replicant slaves".

    • Re:Saviour for people in need in of transplants? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by binaryDigit ( 557647 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @09:39AM (#8971723)
      "BioBricks" might spell the end of people dying due to lack of suitable organ donors

      Or the end of people dying altogether? "Time to go freshen up the liver, mine is getting a bit worn out". Sounds like this might be a competing technology for cloning?

      • End of death (Score:5, Insightful)

        by truthsearch ( 249536 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @10:44AM (#8972380) Homepage Journal
        Or the end of people dying altogether?

        Organ replacement can not eliminate all naturally occurring deaths. People will allow any organ to be replaced except for one: the brain. The rest of the body can live or be replaced with better parts, but the brain will not last forever. Either regenerative processes need to be developed or the brain needs to become downloadable. If we could recreate nerve cells exactly as needed or download a mind from one brain into another then we might be able to end natural death.

        • Re:End of death (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Aumaden ( 598628 )
          Like Cory Doctorow describes in "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom [craphound.com]"?

        • Re:End of death (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          You might want to take a look at "The Binding of Death" by Culain or the more famous Theodore Sturgeon story on the consequences of ending death. Not a pretty sight ... unless we were able to control our reproductive proclivities, of which the odds range from slim to ... well, Nun.

          I also expect that we'll need a brain-wash every 500 or so years ... and how that differs from that drink from Lethe escapes me ...

        • Re:End of death (Score:5, Interesting)

          by simonjester2424 ( 597199 ) <matt.street@gmail.com> on Monday April 26, 2004 @12:00PM (#8973123)
          If you are still alive, and an exact copy of you is made (mind and body). Is that you or a copy of you? Now I distroy the original. Have I killed you or not? Your copy still lives, but you're dead, neh?

          So, how can you say that downloading someone makes them immortal? Perhaps their copy is semi-immortal.

          There are still plenty of ways for the copy to die, even if the process is perfect: insanity, lose of power, deletion (murder or accident), hardware/software failure, bitrot.....

          • a copy of you (Score:3, Informative)

            by dpilot ( 134227 )
            Any science fiction matter transporter really works by scanning the original, making a copy at the destination, and destroying the original. Usually they squeamishly avoid the potential paradoxen by making the scanning process itself destructive.

            But any number of Star Trek 'transporter accident' episodes devolve from the separation of these steps. Including the fact that *there is a pattern buffer* and only the readily-available matter supply prevents you from marching an army of yourself out of the transp

        • Re:End of death (Score:5, Interesting)

          by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @12:12PM (#8973241) Homepage Journal
          Here's a quick hack. Note that people can function more or less normally with their corpus callosum severed -- that's the link between the left and right brain. So, cut the callosum, remove one-half of the brain, and replace with a freshly grown half. Sew patient back up, give them a couple months for re-adjustment. Repeat with next half. Voila! Brand-new brain, installed in two parts.

          • Re:End of death (Score:5, Informative)

            by Sgt York ( 591446 ) <jvolm@earthlin[ ]et ['k.n' in gap]> on Monday April 26, 2004 @03:49PM (#8975550)
            The corpus callosum is not the only conection between the two sides of the brain. There are also connections in the fornix, peduncles, and other portions of the basal ganglia. The callosum connects the cortical regions to each other, but not the basal ganglia*.

            Moreover, the parts of the brain that control life support (heart=beating, vasculature=functioning, etc) are not so easily divided into hemishperes as is are the lobes. These are also the regions in which a good deal of the left-right crossover in the central nervous system takes place. I doubt you would be able to remove one side without seriously disrupting the other.

            *For the anatomists : yes, I know that the ganglia are also hemispheric. They do, however, have communicating white matter going between the hemispheres.

        • Re:End of death (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Esion Modnar ( 632431 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @12:53PM (#8973653)
          or the brain needs to become downloadable.

          And this is where technology ends and philosophy begins.

          Consider the differences between electronic transmittal and physical movement. In electronic transmission (emails, file transfers, etc.) a copy is made at the destination, and the original is (optionally) destroyed. Physical movement involves an object moving in four dimensions, without copying or destruction being involved.

          If I move from one side of the room to another, I am still me. If somebody transmits an exact copy of me from one side of the room to the other, and then destroys the original, I am not still me... a copy.

          What's even more interesting, is that each living organism is constantly changing, bringing in and excreting matter on a constant basis. Over time, the matter composing your being is not the same matter which composed your being 20 years ago. And yet you are still "you." And yet you aren't. Do you like the same music? Do you act the same? Would your 20-year younger self even like you? The you of today shares an history with your younger self and thus originates your sense of self-continuity.

          So, to conclude, downloading your brain to some electronic or otherwise existence is not going to make a bit of difference to your biological self. When your body dies, YOU are dead. Doesn't matter how many exact copies somebody made of you.

          • The "new" you.. the copy, might not be aware of this and, since it's experiences are identical to yours (assuming perfect copying practice), it will believe itself to be you, and therefore it will believe that "you" have continued.

            But it will a nasty surprise for the original "you".

            The only time I would consider such a procedure would be if I were already on the verge of death. In which case it's more of a thought to continuing my work, or passing on some sort of legacy. Either way, my expectation is that
    • I dont think you'll see this forming organs anytime in the near future, The tech behind this is only for the formation of simple kinds of life, and changing that into something that produces human cells could take ~4.5 billion years, at least outside the lab. But in reality the best chance for organ transplants is stem cell research, but we know how much the religion freak like that idea.
    • > ... might spell the end of people dying due to lack of suitable organ donors.

      Death is one of the most important parts of life. It doesn't matter too terribly much when or how it occurs, as long as the person has enjoyed their life. If an organ fails, maybe the question "Does this person still need to live" should be asked. After all, we don't all need to be alive forever. I'd hate to see the day when people live to be 180 years old.
      If people stop dying (or death slows down, as it surely will contin

      • or at least a really, really long time, if I promise I'll never reproduce (and voluntarily undergo surgery to make sure of it?)

        I'm not afraid of dying, but I am afraid of not getting to do everything I wanted to before it happens.

      • Look up some population statistics sometime. All the educated nations are already below replacement level (Europe, United States, Australia, China, etc) and after the current parent generation dies out (50 years?) we might see a population crash.

        So actually, we need to be having more children (though less developed nations don't have this problem, they do have a problem with AIDS and SARS and other deadly diseases).

      • Re:Saviour for people in need in of transplants? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 26, 2004 @10:32AM (#8972265)
        Death is one of the most important parts of life.

        Death is an important part of life in the same way that 0 is an important part of 1.

        It doesn't matter too terribly much when or how it occurs, as long as the person has enjoyed their life.

        This is called "hedonism" and is, like all other non-reproductive theories of what is or is not important in life, unsupported by evidence.

        If an organ fails, maybe the question "Does this person still need to live" should be asked.

        Maybe the question should be "Does this organ need replacement?" This is not 600 B.C.

        After all, we don't all need to be alive forever.

        None of us need to be alive at all.

        I'd hate to see the day when people live to be 180 years old.

        Knock yourself out, then. [google.com]

        If people stop dying (or death slows down, as it surely will continue to do), the world's population problem will only grow.

        Earth doesn't have a population problem, humans have a resource distribution problem.

        I think people really need to 1) stop having children

        I think scientists need to invent a time machine and give this advice to your parents.

        2) try to accept death a little more.

        You first.
        • Death is an important part of life in the same way that 0 is an important part of 1.

          True enough, death is the opposite of life, but 1 would be useless without 0.

          This is called "hedonism" and is, like all other non-reproductive theories of what is or is not important in life, unsupported by evidence.

          Things like this can be studied until the end of time, but it still won't yield any direct answer that could be considered factual.

          Maybe the question should be "Does this organ need replacement?" This is

          • Death is an important part of life in the same way that 0 is an important part of 1.

            True enough, death is the opposite of life, but 1 would be useless without 0.

            You can't really compare the number system to the life cycle. Numbers are linear, a straight line. Life and death are part of a cycle, a circle. Life is the portion of the circle where we consume (plants, animals, etc.) and death is the portion where we are consumed. Ashes to ashes, as they say.

            Forget about the meaning of life. There is no reaso

      • Overpopulation (Score:3, Insightful)

        by truthsearch ( 249536 )
        I think people really need to 1) stop having children...

        Humans seem to naturally decrease reproductive rates when necessary. Excluding cultural factors, like some expecting couples to have as many children as possible to provide for the parents, people will have less children as overcrowding occurs. I'm not sure of the cultural influence, but the birth rate in Japan has slowed over the years. In metropolitan areas like NYC fewer couples have children. Studies have shown it's a natually occurring pheno

      • Re:Saviour for people in need in of transplants? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        If an organ fails, maybe the question "Does this person still need to live" should be asked.

        Very much like the old religious assertion that if someone becomes diseased, "god" has cursed them and they deserve their fate.

        If your car has a problem with it's breaks do you say "Does I really need this car?" and chuck it in the river. THINK before you POST man.

        I'd hate to see the day when people live to be 180 years old.

        I'm sure back when the average human lifespan was 34 years, someone thought the same a
        • f your car has a problem with it's breaks do you say "Does I really need this car?" and chuck it in the river
          Interesting concept. I think if more people really thought about if they really needed a car or not they would be quite surprised to find that they do not. We'd also solve all those pesky issues about roll-over accidents, fuel economy, dependence on foreign oil, etc. etc.
        • Very much like the old religious assertion that if someone becomes diseased, "god" has cursed them and they deserve their fate.

          Well, even if they were wrong, their (now-crazy-sounding) beliefs might have actually been beneficial.

          If your car has a problem with it's breaks do you say "Does I really need this car?" and chuck it in the river.

          An interesting comparison, but I don't think it fully applies. A car is meant to serve its owner. If it stops working, it's only a temporary problem and can be repair
      • If an organ fails, maybe the question "Does this person still need to live" should be asked.

        . . . yeah right, and the next question will be. . . "is he a Liberal?" /Limbaugh

        no thanks to your utopian worldview.
    • ... India's outsourcing boom because corportations will soon be able to assemble 100% compliant personnel from off the shelf parts. Think of it, legions of mindless corporate drones who do not have to be paid a salary and can be recycled into hotdogs to feed the remaining workforce when they become redundant.

    • Re:Saviour for people in need in of transplants? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Total_Wimp ( 564548 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @10:02AM (#8971947)
      I'm not worried about replicants. I'm worried accidentally creating critters that interact with humans like viruses or bacteria but we don't have a very good idea of how to deal with them.

      I'm also worried about the same thing, but made on purpose.

      Once life becomes as easy to engineer as a computer program then you have to deal with the same thing as computer systems have to deal with now that any nutjob can use the tools. I don't really think we're ready for the consequences of not having McCaffee AV installed in our bone marrow.

      Should it be stopped. Nah. But these folks better be pretty damn careful with what they're doing. As with GM foods though, I doubt they will.

      TW
      • "McCaffee AV installed in our bone marrow"

        If you change that to Mr Coffee IV (intravenous) into the bone marrow, you might become a millionaire.

  • Trypo! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Himring ( 646324 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @09:34AM (#8971681) Homepage Journal
    "Scientific American is carrying a story about sythetic life...."

    Trypo!

  • How Long Before... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 26, 2004 @09:35AM (#8971685)
    Lego Starts Suing?

  • Hope this will bring us closer to (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @09:35AM (#8971691) Homepage Journal
    answering the fundamental question:

    "Is life merely a convenient arrangement of cells or is it necessary to have a "spark of life" or the "soul" to bring bring the cells to "life"?"

    • Be more specific (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Thinkit4 ( 745166 ) * on Monday April 26, 2004 @09:38AM (#8971717)
      Does anyone actually argue that grass has a soul? Look up the thalamus, it evolved in vertabrates and is likely where this "spark of consciousness" is.

      • Re:Be more specific (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Merkuri22 ( 708225 )

        Does anyone actually argue that grass has a soul?

        Yes, some Native American tribes believe that everything has a "soul," even grass and rocks.

        Look up the thalamus, it evolved in vertabrates and is likely where this "spark of consciousness" is.

        There's a little known theory that the "spark of consciousness" actually resides in all the cells, not just a part of the brain. This would help explain near-death experiences where the person who is clinically brain-dead can have experiences during this dead

        • Re:Be more specific (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Gyan ( 6853 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @10:26AM (#8972201)
          This would help explain near-death experiences where the person who is clinically brain-dead can have experiences during this dead period.

          What?

          A person who is brain-dead doesn't come back. You meant a person who is temporarily diagnosed as dead, based on lack of pulse.

          Near-death experiences can be summoned, almost by will. Slip someone a dose of 3mg/kg ketamine HCl without their knowledge. When their trips ends, tell them you thought they had died, they'll categorize their trip as a "near-death" experience. Their descriptions will also be pretty similar to those who were technically near death.
          • Oh, sorry, my bad then. I had assumed that when somebody was clinically dead (then later revived) that it could be based on brain-waves rather than just a pulse. Don't remember where I read that info, but if it's impossible to come back from brain-death then the near-death experiences are more explainable as random brain firings or other such "normal" experiences.
    • Unless you are willing to accept an adequately performing Eliza equivalent as proof, you'll never know.

      Besides, the question has already been answered - No. It's just that most people don't accept it. If someone comes up with something that suggests the answer is Yes, it will be considered 'answered' (in the contemporary ethos), and there will be naysayers to the affirmative answer, as well. However, remember that social consensus doesn't dictate truth.
    • People have been modifying bacteria, viruses and other simple organisms to make them do things they usually don't. However, even if these things are published, it is not easy to share this information. A parts-library will help because is like open source and is hopefully machine-searchable. That itself is worth the trouble. What was once the technique and expertise of one lab can now be leveraged somewhere else.

      IMHO, a parts library should not just have the names of the components but also how they can

    • Re:Hope this will bring us closer to (Score:4, Interesting)

      by StrawberryFrog ( 67065 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @10:11AM (#8972057) Homepage Journal
      "Is life merely a convenient arrangement of cells or is it necessary to have a "spark of life" or the "soul" to bring bring the cells to "life"?"

      I'd say that the last 100 years of science makes it abundantly clear that what you can measure is all there is - there's no mystery to it that cannot be apprehended, no soul-in-scare-quotes to bring about life-in-scare-quotes. Nothing mysterious, but plenty that we don't understand. Yet.

      • That's Philosophy (Score:4, Insightful)

        by The Famous Brett Wat ( 12688 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @11:05AM (#8972589) Homepage Journal
        I'd say that the last 100 years of science makes it abundantly clear that what you can measure is all there is...

        This is a tragically popular misconception, especially amongst that part of the nerd herd that hasn't studied enough philosophy. Science+technology has been a great success, sure, but it has in no way demonstrated that "what you can measure is all that there is". On the contrary: what you can measure is all that science can deal with. There may well be such a thing as a soul or a spirit, but unless we can measure it, we'll never have a science related to it.

        When you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of a science.

        Attributed to Lord Kelvin

        The idea, "all you can measure is all there is", is a metaphysical statement (a philosophical claim of the grandest sort, IMO) congruent with the position known as materialism. The assumption that "there's no mystery... that cannot be apprehended" (by science) is a tenet of scientism, not science. It's just a way of saying, "I don't believe that anything exists which transcends our ability to analyse scientifically". You can believe that if it pleases you to do so, but you're utterly deluded if you think science has demonstrated anything of the sort. Such demonstrations are beyond the power and scope of science; philosophers of metaphysics might get there eventually, but given progress in the field to date, I doubt it very much.


    • > "Is life merely a convenient arrangement of cells or is it necessary to have a "spark of life" or the "soul" to bring bring the cells to "life"?"

      We've been figuring out what makes life tick for several hundred years now, and never once found any indication that it's anything but chemisty.

      Maybe there's a soul lurking in there somewhere, but it would sure have to be a little one.

  • no dice (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jacquesm ( 154384 ) <j AT ww DOT com> on Monday April 26, 2004 @09:37AM (#8971713) Homepage
    as long as we don't know how to take care of the non-artificial kind of life I think we should stay the hell away from introducing artificial kinds.

    Just think about what *one* lab escaped 'pregnant' self replicating lifeform could do to our ecology. We're doing enough harm as it is, no need to bypass 4 billion years (sorry creationists) of evolution of the predator-prey relationship.

    Or would you like your tap to give you 'green scum' instead of water ?

    • Re:no dice (Score:2, Insightful)

      by wynterx ( 148276 )
      Despite being a (short-age) creationist, I agree with this parent.

      Whether over 4 billion or 6 thousand years, the earth (at least until recently) had settled into a (relatively) stable balance between prey and predator and consumer and producer. There is enough potential damage in just modifying the life we have (through GM etc) without trying to make a complete rogue lifeform.

      Are there (too) many parentheses in this post?

    • Re:no dice (Score:4, Interesting)

      by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @10:01AM (#8971937)
      you dont need to have escapist lab-made "lifeforms" to be scared like this...

      remember the space station MIR and its colony of cosmic-ray mutated microbes that was eating it from inside out (including the quartz windows)?

      there's a strong possibility that some of those nasties survived re-entry and are now thriving somewhere in the Pacific.

      i submit that the toothpaste has been squeezed out of the tube already, so we might as well kick evolution in the butt and introduce as much new life as possible and sit and watch what happens.

      survival of the fittest at 11!
      • interesting ! do you have any info on that ? I missed out on that completely.
        • this the most complete summary i could find about of the whole shebang... I admit there's a lot of FUD from the alarmists, but nothing in there tells me the threat is zero risk.

          http://www.anomalist.com/reports/mir.html

          Virus 2: The Real Story of the 'Mir' Threat

          By Igor Popov

          In a Hollywood blockbuster, the Russian orbital station "Mir," having fallen into the Pacific Ocean, threatens mankind with a terrible virus that it has brought in from the space.

          It is interesting that in 2001 a similar chilling plot
          • "When one of the station's devices failed and I set to dissembling it, I found there a yellow worm more than a meter long& I have not seen anything of the kind on the Earth," Serebrov said.

            Dude, a yellow worm more than a meter long? You believe that?

            Quartz is silicon dioxide - it has no energy value or mineral nutrients in it. Quartz-eating bacteria? Come on - extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof.

            Igor Popov ... other interests comprise fortean issues, weird phenomena and hidden histori
            • ok then, here's a space.com story about it with some photos...

              www.space.com/news/spacestation/space_fungus_000 72 7.html

              adjust the url after copypasting it in your browser

    • Re:no dice (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Just think about what *one* lab escaped 'pregnant' self replicating lifeform could do to our ecology. We're doing enough harm as it is, no need to bypass 4 billion years (sorry creationists) of evolution of the predator-prey relationship.


      I think what tree huggers fail to realize is that the Earth will do fine, for billions of more years. We, The People may not survive, but the Earth will be here for eons to come.

      • We, The People may not survive, but the Earth will be here for eons to come.

        I once heard somebody say that we can't kill the earth, but we can piss it off enough that it may just decide to shrug us off.

        But yes, most "tree huggers" do realize this, and if you ask me it makes their cause all the more important. If we're not trying to "save the planet" for our own survival, why the hell would we bother?

    • Re:no dice (Score:3, Funny)

      by Merkuri22 ( 708225 )

      Just think about what *one* lab escaped 'pregnant' self replicating lifeform could do to our ecology.

      I think you're getting "synthetic life" mixed up with "tribbles." ;)

  • 1. Using a whole population of cells to fine tune the level of control. Source: You et al, "Programmed population control by cell-cell communication and regulated killing", Nature 428, pp868-871.
    2. Writing a "compiler" for translating high level instructions (blink on and off at 2 Hz) into biobricks. Source: personal communication with Rodney Brooks.
  • When are we going to get real interoperable building blocks for software? And I don't mean STL for C++ or CPAN for Perl. I mean building blocks, LEGO-like (or civil-engineering-like) for building software. Anybody up to the task? :)

  • Guess it depends on the definition of "life" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by w.p.richardson ( 218394 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @09:40AM (#8971736) Homepage
    Are viruses alive? Researchers can customize viruses (by removing protiens, substituting amino acids, etc.) and have done so for years in labs. If a virus is alive (possibly debatable), then there is already a precdent for synthetic life.

    Additionally, I would consider clones to be synthetic life. Any life arising from the hand of man is de facto synthetic, IMHO.

    • Re:Guess it depends on the definition of "life" (Score:5, Funny)

      by Michael Dorfman ( 324722 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @10:05AM (#8971983)
      > Any life arising from the hand of man is de facto synthetic

      Well, that would apply to most donated sperm, then.

    • Any life arising from the hand of man is de facto synthetic, IMHO.

      Well, I guess then you'd consider all babies to be "synthetic." Oh, wait, no that's not a man's hand that they arise from, I suppose.

    • IIRC the definition of life depends on an organism being able to reproduce in some way without having to depend on another species. By that definition viruses are not alive, as they depend on some kind of host.

    • Synthetic (Score:4, Insightful)

      by truthsearch ( 249536 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @10:28AM (#8972223) Homepage Journal
      I think most of us would consider an organism to be synthetic if it's built from scratch with non-living components.

      So the question becomes, can one build a "living" (i.e. identical to a natural) virus from only the parts that make it up? In other words, would a virus, or any living thing, become alive once someone puts together all the parts in exactly the same way?

      And then some might still say that just because it acts identical to the naturally occuring organism doesn't mean it's alive. It acts alive, but nature didn't give it a soul.

      I think we'll end up with more questions than answers, more debate than decisions.
    • The most interesting definition I have ever seen of life is "that which will locally reduce entropy".

      Granted, I'm not familiar with all the intricacies of this definition, but it is an interesting one and eliminates the discussion about "souls".

    • Re:Guess it depends on the definition of "life" (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Any life arising from the hand of man is de facto synthetic, IMHO.

      I'll exercise great self restraint and ignore the jokes about the "hand of man" here. Instead, I'll point out that you probably want to classify a salad as a synthetic food by the same method of judgement. How synthetic is it, really, when it's constructed from all natural ingredients (as is the case with a clone)?

  • but.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by fateswarm ( 590255 )
    will it be released in GPL?

  • Cool technology (Score:3, Funny)

    by dirtsurfer ( 595452 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @09:44AM (#8971775) Journal
    Pretty soon we can have a real living lego maniac (tm)

    Sweet.

  • MIT Database (Score:5, Informative)

    by cTbone ( 632308 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @09:46AM (#8971801)
    MIT Registry of Standard Biological Parts:

    http://parts.mit.edu/

    As mentioned in the article.

  • Blah blah, more words, more words, blah blah blah (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JessLeah ( 625838 ) * on Monday April 26, 2004 @09:47AM (#8971813)
    Given the fact that we haven't even yet created a single bacterium from scratch (the closest we've come is to "bum out" all the optional instructions from one of the simplest known naturally-occuring bacteria to create the simplest possible bacterium we could think of), how long will it be before we have this hot new vapourware biotech? Wake me when it's over... oh, in about 20 YEARS. Yet more speculative flimflam.

    Incidentally, what in the heck does this tech have to do with Blade Runner? Blade Runner replicants were seemingly composed of individual organs and tissues grown de novo in labs and vats (e.g. the eyes in Chu's "Eye World"). Blade Runner replicants are built of "organ bricks", not "DNA bricks" as being discussed here. Jesus Christ...
    • Given the fact that we haven't even yet created a single bacterium from scratch...

      I'm no bio-engineering expert but we have created a synthetic virus [bbc.co.uk], synthetic blood vessels [sciencedaily.com], synthetic hormones, and even have made some progress towards synthetic organs. Granted, it's not quite creating life, but if you aren't impressed you are either an incurable cynic or doesn't understand the technology. (and probably both) Give it time. Just because we can't do something now doesn't mean we can't enjoy speculatin

  • I love these bio-tech stories (Score:4, Interesting)

    by l0ungeb0y ( 442022 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @09:49AM (#8971833) Homepage Journal
    Everytime some new advance in bio-tech get's posted the gadget geeks and code pushers get ramped up into a ludite rage against this new evil threat to civilization itself.

    Maybe if some of the readers who find themselves espousing the peril of eco-terror that awaits due to "mans ignoble tinkering with what it best left untouched" applied that same feverous perspective at lawmakers who vote for things like the DMCA and Patriot Act, they might find they have something in common.

    Popcorn anyone?

  • Ahm.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fateswarm ( 590255 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @09:50AM (#8971838) Homepage
    Ahm.. can anyone enlighten us in plain english if this is about that so-called 'Biologic Computer' we've read about last year? I can't recall the technology used on that one and I'm sure most readers with no background in genetics have similar questions.

  • Landmark beginning, or possibly... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cagle_.25 ( 715952 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @09:50AM (#8971844) Journal
    ...beginning of the end. This is the good first stab at a systematic approach to bio-engineering, which of course can lead to robust theories. The scary part is the potential for 'virus' creation; it's inconceivable that the technology could be sequestered into "good hands" indefinitely.

    The evolutionary aspects of this were also intriguing. This will provide material for a substantial test of Bill Dembski's [arn.org] theories about the limitations of evolutionary algorithms. These theories have become important (if true) in several areas, including NIST's attempt to create self-driving cars.

    • > This will provide material for a substantial test of Bill Dembski's theories about the limitations of evolutionary algorithms.

      The "theory", which Dembski gratuitously mis-applies, is Wolpert & McReady's No Free Lunch Theorem [psu.edu].

      Dembski is nothing but a creationist apologist, relying on pseudo-science and obfuscation to give creationism a glamor of scientific respectability among the ill-informed.

  • Where could this lead? Hackers starting to move into the bioengineering realm.... Pretty soon, they are creating self-replicating destructive life forms that actually attack people instead of computer systems. They would likely name these things "worms" and "virii" after the computer programs that do something similar.

  • Programming Organisms? (Score:3, Funny)

    by subrosas ( 752277 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @09:57AM (#8971899)
    Does this mean we'll also see bio-pop ups for pr0n, bio-spy ware, and viruses? Considering the amount of bad software churned out by business, perhaps we don't want them 'programming' organisms? Maybe this is something to leave locked in the lab and not try to find applications.

  • Micromachines (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gmuslera ( 3436 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @10:03AM (#8971962) Homepage Journal
    They more could be seen as micromachines (with a builtin replication engine) than "life". The replication part is nice, but the potential of what it could do is even nicer.

    Think on them as working as metacatalizers to enable very hard to do for conventional methods chemical products. Or as detectors, not only for TNT as they said there, but also as more trustable than current applications using i.e. animals (dogs to discover drugs). Or as filters, they could assimilate some elements and maybe concentrate them.

    Another nice thing about the article is the concept of building blocks. Maybe in a future could, on demand (i.e. an authomatic system), make an specific one to react under certain conditions (i.e. to clean some dangerous contaminator).

    In the minus side, working with self-replicating things could be risky. If things goes off control and there is no "shutdown" mechanism (i.e. they die in an environment with O2) the potential for a big disaster could be high

    • Re:Micromachines (Score:2, Informative)

      by meanroy ( 767729 )
      Very interesting! This is fantastic science and may lead to great advances in many fields. As some other posters note, however, I see potential serious problems on the horizon however. Here are some specifics:
      We already have problems with Genetically engineered crops, now it appears we have custom bacteria on the way. (here already, actually)
      An earlier Slashdot topic [slashdot.org] addressed this, though without many supporting links. Here are a few:
      "Toxic pollen from widely planted, genetically modified corn can k [cornell.edu]
  • What was the technology behind Blade Runner's replicants? Maybe I missed the part in the movie where they explained all that.

  • Lego (Score:3, Funny)

    by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @10:38AM (#8972330) Homepage
    You know....Lego was one of the first toy makers to go into robotics and do it well. Here's hoping Lego is still around to go into BioBricks and that one day my kids will be able to go to Toys R Us and pick up a Lego Nano Kit.

  • Before you get carried away (Score:5, Insightful)

    by espressojim ( 224775 ) <eris@NOsPam.tarogue.net> on Monday April 26, 2004 @10:44AM (#8972387)
    Before you all get carried away with this, a few things to note:

    This is a bacterial genome. What is currently being produced is isolated sets of parts of the genome that have been cataloged as having specific functions in a bacteria. These 'blocks' could be put together, if you knew how to regulate all of them, and you were smart enough to add all the neccesary components for replication.

    This sort of information is already known for some bacteria. There is a very small amount of DNA in bacterial genomes, and it's easy to sequence. On top of that, it's easier to figure out exactly what a particular bit of sequence does, so this is just creating a one stop shop to look up particular coding sequences.

    What this *isn't* is a eukaryotic genome. You aren't going to be putting together complex organisms this way in our lifetime. We don't even know what the VAST majority of the genome does. Do you remember the phrase 'junk dna'? We're now figuring out that the 'junk' actually has function, and there's even been a case where a mutation in intronic DNA has been shown to cause disease. Life is much more complicated in organisms larger than bacteria, and it's going to take the rest of our lives to reverse engineer complex life, much less begin to design it from scratch.

    So, the take home message: It's cool, and it may be useful for bacteria. We're not going to grow organisms, people, tissue, organs, etc with this idea.

  • Very Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Pan T. Hose ( 707794 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @11:03AM (#8972570) Homepage Journal

    It seems like a natural progress of artificial life and as such reminds me more about Tierra [his.atr.jp] than Blade Runner's replicants. If you don't know Tierra, there is an interesting description [wikipedia.org] on Wikipedia:

    Tierra is a computer simulation developed by ecologist Thomas S. Ray in the early 1990s in which computer programs compete for central processor unit (CPU) time and access to main memory. The computer programs in Tierra are evolvable and can mutate, self-replicate and recombine. Tierra is a frequently cited example of an artificial life model; in the metaphor of the Tierra, the evolvable computer programs can be considered as digital organisms which compete for energy (CPU time) and resources (main memory).

    The basic Tierra model has been used to experimentally explore in silico, the basic processes of evolutionary and ecological dynamics. Processes such as the dynamics of punctuated equilibrium, host-parasite co-evolution and density dependent natural selection are amenable to investigation within the Tierra framework. A notable difference to more conventional models of evolutionary computation, such as genetic algorithms is that there is no explicit, or exogenous fitness function built into the model. Often in such models there is the notion of a function being "optimized"; in the case of Tierra, the fitness function is endogenous: there is simply survival and death. According to Ray and others this may allow for more "open-ended" evolution, in which the dynamics of the feedback between evolutionary and ecological processes can itself change over time (see evolvability).

    While the dynamics of Tierra are highly suggestive, the significance of the dynamics for real ecological and evolutionary behavior are still a subject of debate within the scientific community. Tierra is an abstract model, but any quantitative model is still subject to the same validation and verification techniques applied to more traditional mathematical models, and as such, has no special status. More detailed models in which more realistic dynamics of biological systems and organisms are incorporated is now an active research field (see systems biology).

    It is very important to remember that given sufficient space and complexity, the difference between carbon-based form of life as we know it and any "artificial" form thereof is only that of a medium. Very interesting read. I hope it will go much further during the next few years and we will see some unimaginable implications of this new idea.

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