QuantumFog

February 12, 2007

Rebuilding lifeforms, one molecule at a time

My young'un is taking a high school curriculum designed for engineers. Says he wants to be a bio-engineer. Great, I says, but the terminology is outdated. Today its called Synthethic Biology. A couple of quotes give us a sense for the state-of-the-art:

"... if someone asks me to make an organism that counts to 3,000 and turns left, I can grab the parts off the shelf...." Drew Endy, MIT.

"We're not trying to imitate nature; were trying to supplement nature. We're trying to expand the genetic code." Dr. Romesburg, Scripps Research.

iGEM is an acronym for the "international Genetically Engineered Machine" competition, held each year at the Massechusetts Institute of Technology. In 2006, thirty-seven teams met to create the coolest artificial lifeforms.

They redisigned e. coli bacteria to smell like bananas. One team created cells that swam in unison to create a pattern. Another created a network of cells that amplified and passed signals along a cellular network, then changed color according to the signal.

But it gets even more interesting. MIT has a stock of Biobricks consisting of standard DNA modules that can be assembled like Lego blocks. Out in Los Alamos, Dr. Rasmussen is a physicist with a $5 million grant to build a living cell entirely from scratch.

"I suspect that, in five years or so, the artificial genetic systems that we have developed will be supporting an artificial lifeform that can reproduce, evolve, learn and respond to environmental change." - Steven Benner, Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology.

If true, then we're not far from creating lifeforms with such things as a built in wireless communications that appears to be mental telepathy. From there we move to sentient creatures arguing theology. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.

"There is no technical barrier to synthesizing plants and animals, it will happen as soon as anyone pays for it." - Drew Endy, MIT

Maybe not.

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