Saturday, November 14, 2009

Synthetic Biology? Lets Move Forward

We are at a biological turning point: We can invent organisms to make our drugs and fuel, even recode our DNA.  You know, all those things that “God” used to do for us?  We have the power to do many of them ourselves and are on our way to being able to do them.

Our fuel supplies are running lower than others would want us to know.  So, why not create biological organism create our own fuel.  We are decoding human, animal and plant DNA, only a matter of time until we recode the human body to resist disease.

Through the combining the elements of engineering, chemistry, computer science and molecular biology we have before us the ability to assemble biological tools required to redesign the living world.

Sorry God but it seems we are figuring out your powers and we ourselves will become Gods of sorts.  We will soon be taking cells or other organisms and turning them into machines to create or do whatever it is we might need.

Cells specifically designed to create drugs or make fuel.  Organism that “invade” our own DNA to fix errors in our own code, ending disease, repairing defective hearts, livers, kidneys…etc.

Like the new malaria drug [one of the first products that can be manufactured through synthetic biology—and a project funded by the Gates Foundation], they are going to be able to make all the drug that is needed in the world in a couple of vats. One of the reasons that’s exciting is because it’s a stable, easy way to regulate the manufacturing, to make sure that it’s done properly. We have a big problem with malaria medicine because it’s misused, it’s taken the wrong way, it’s counterfeit—and this is a way of regulating it. I think we’ll see that with energy sources too. It’ll be solid.

Exciting stuff, isn’t it?

As long as we properly regulate the stuff it will become a great thing.  If we don’t regulate it like we didn’t regulate our Banks, then shit happens….bad shit.

We could actually design new life, wow!

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