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Writing genomes, once we can do it, will be the technology that drives this century (sorry, nodejs). Imagine printing a bamboo tree programmed to grow into a be

Writing genomes, once we can do it, will be the technology that drives this century (sorry, nodejs). Imagine printing a bamboo tree programmed to grow into a bed frame.

jacquesm 11y ago
I don't see how being able to write DNA will give you the ability to grow bamboo bedframes.
- ilurk 11y ago
  Will DNA be Turing Complete? :) Not the same, but quite related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JNSpMhJLvg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JNSpMhJLvg
  - udp 11y ago
    > Will DNA be Turing Complete? :) Actually... quite possibly. Check out the first slide in [1]. You can basically build genetic logic gates using promoters to conditionally (i.e. depending on the presence of light, a protein, etc.) produce a protein to induce or repress another promoter, thereby increasing or decreasing the expression of another gene. It's still pretty early stages and there are a lot of factors that make this more complicated (life isn't binary), but the ultimate goal of synthetic biology is to be able to program DNA in the same way you might program a computer. [1] http://co.mbine.org/events/COMBINE_2015/agenda?q=system/files/combine2015-Utah_101615_v3.pdf http://co.mbine.org/events/COMBINE_2015/agenda?q=system/file...
  - dekhn 11y ago
    Yes, DNA (with a combination of some enzymes) is capable of universal computation. So far, this has not turned out to be anything particularly interesting from an engineering standpoint,
  - crusso 11y ago
    Will DNA be Turing Complete? DNA (with supporting cell machinery) create us, so...
  - cge 11y ago
    Yes, even without enzymes and cells. I have DNA crystallization based tiling systems that can implement essentially arbitrary 1d cellular automata and could implement Turing machines directly. People have implemented neural networks with branch-migration-based systems, and DNA gates can be used to implement systems of logic gates and a wide class of chemical reaction networks. There's a whole field of DNA and molecular computing.
- astazangasta 11y ago
  DNA is code, we just don't have a compiler yet.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    Phenotype = genotype + environment + reproductive phenotype (that is, the seed shell for a plant, egg for a bird, or the uterus for a mammal). Being able to rewrite the genotype doesn't give you total customization of the resulting phenotype.
    - mylons 11y ago
      and this is just our current understanding, which is certainly going to shift as measurement becomes cheaper and more accurate. iterative science!
    - ethbro 11y ago
      Wouldn't the reproductive phenotype in this case also be genetically controlled (albeit in the previous generation's)?
      - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
        Except that it's also subject to its own environmental influences, separately from those which impact the new individual after its birth.
    - refurb 11y ago
      Exactly! Identical twins have the same DNA, but they don't have the same fingerprints. Why? Different environment in the womb. Could we tweak things like eye color? Sure. Things like intelligence? Much, much harder.
  - mylons 11y ago
    this is overly simplistic
    - 11y ago
dekhn 11y ago
bamboo is already a fine construction material, it's much more efficient to just grow long straight pieces and join them after the fact. That way you don't have to do any genome engineering, or have special growth facilities for oddly shaped bamboo (for one, bamboo that doesn't grow straight up is going to take a lot more space on the ground).
hyperbovine 11y ago
i think it would be much easier to just grown the bamboo into the frame, a la the square watermelon. But I digress: we are many, many decades away from being able to do things like that. Possibly centuries. Even programming single-celled organisms to assemble simple hydrocarbons is barely within our reach, at present.
- astazangasta 11y ago
  Consider how we went from nothing to cell phones in a century; this is not that far away.
  - hyperbovine 11y ago
    Not sure what you imagine the early 20th century to have been like ... I mean, general relativity just turned 100. Anyways, in terms of our understanding the genetic architecture of even basic traits like height (to say nothing of complicated ones like the morphology of a bamboo shoot) we're practically in the Dark Ages. I know it's a bitter pill to swallow for the "Singularity is near" crowd.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
I think right now, your best approach to growing bamboo bed frames would be to a) first make a frame-shaped template, and b) make bamboo cells grow according to the template. Encoding it in just cell DNA is beyond our current state of knowledge and probably insanely tricky - Fourier-transforming a square and encoding it into chemical feedback loops and encoding that into DNA kind of tricky.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Sad to see you downvoted, that's exactly how certain wooden rakes are made (hence my reference to that upthread).
adrianN 11y ago
Writing genomes and understanding protein folding will be the gateway to full nanotech. Think about it: proteins are already tiny machines that perform specific functions. If we learn how to make them ourselves the sky's the limit.

Writing genomes, once we can do it, will be the technology that drives this century (sorry, nodejs). Imagine printing a bamboo tree programmed to grow into a bed frame.

jacquesm 11y ago

I don't see how being able to write DNA will give you the ability to grow bamboo bedframes.

ilurk 11y ago
Will DNA be Turing Complete? :) Not the same, but quite related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JNSpMhJLvg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JNSpMhJLvg
- udp 11y ago
  > Will DNA be Turing Complete? :) Actually... quite possibly. Check out the first slide in [1]. You can basically build genetic logic gates using promoters to conditionally (i.e. depending on the presence of light, a protein, etc.) produce a protein to induce or repress another promoter, thereby increasing or decreasing the expression of another gene. It's still pretty early stages and there are a lot of factors that make this more complicated (life isn't binary), but the ultimate goal of synthetic biology is to be able to program DNA in the same way you might program a computer. [1] http://co.mbine.org/events/COMBINE_2015/agenda?q=system/files/combine2015-Utah_101615_v3.pdf http://co.mbine.org/events/COMBINE_2015/agenda?q=system/file...
- dekhn 11y ago
  Yes, DNA (with a combination of some enzymes) is capable of universal computation. So far, this has not turned out to be anything particularly interesting from an engineering standpoint,
- crusso 11y ago
  Will DNA be Turing Complete? DNA (with supporting cell machinery) create us, so...
- cge 11y ago
  Yes, even without enzymes and cells. I have DNA crystallization based tiling systems that can implement essentially arbitrary 1d cellular automata and could implement Turing machines directly. People have implemented neural networks with branch-migration-based systems, and DNA gates can be used to implement systems of logic gates and a wide class of chemical reaction networks. There's a whole field of DNA and molecular computing.
astazangasta 11y ago
DNA is code, we just don't have a compiler yet.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  Phenotype = genotype + environment + reproductive phenotype (that is, the seed shell for a plant, egg for a bird, or the uterus for a mammal). Being able to rewrite the genotype doesn't give you total customization of the resulting phenotype.
  - mylons 11y ago
    and this is just our current understanding, which is certainly going to shift as measurement becomes cheaper and more accurate. iterative science!
  - ethbro 11y ago
    Wouldn't the reproductive phenotype in this case also be genetically controlled (albeit in the previous generation's)?
    - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
      Except that it's also subject to its own environmental influences, separately from those which impact the new individual after its birth.
  - refurb 11y ago
    Exactly! Identical twins have the same DNA, but they don't have the same fingerprints. Why? Different environment in the womb. Could we tweak things like eye color? Sure. Things like intelligence? Much, much harder.
- mylons 11y ago
  this is overly simplistic
  - 11y ago

dekhn 11y ago

bamboo is already a fine construction material, it's much more efficient to just grow long straight pieces and join them after the fact. That way you don't have to do any genome engineering, or have special growth facilities for oddly shaped bamboo (for one, bamboo that doesn't grow straight up is going to take a lot more space on the ground).

hyperbovine 11y ago

i think it would be much easier to just grown the bamboo into the frame, a la the square watermelon. But I digress: we are many, many decades away from being able to do things like that. Possibly centuries. Even programming single-celled organisms to assemble simple hydrocarbons is barely within our reach, at present.

astazangasta 11y ago
Consider how we went from nothing to cell phones in a century; this is not that far away.
- hyperbovine 11y ago
  Not sure what you imagine the early 20th century to have been like ... I mean, general relativity just turned 100. Anyways, in terms of our understanding the genetic architecture of even basic traits like height (to say nothing of complicated ones like the morphology of a bamboo shoot) we're practically in the Dark Ages. I know it's a bitter pill to swallow for the "Singularity is near" crowd.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

I think right now, your best approach to growing bamboo bed frames would be to a) first make a frame-shaped template, and b) make bamboo cells grow according to the template. Encoding it in just cell DNA is beyond our current state of knowledge and probably insanely tricky - Fourier-transforming a square and encoding it into chemical feedback loops and encoding that into DNA kind of tricky.

jacquesm 11y ago
Sad to see you downvoted, that's exactly how certain wooden rakes are made (hence my reference to that upthread).

adrianN 11y ago

Writing genomes and understanding protein folding will be the gateway to full nanotech. Think about it: proteins are already tiny machines that perform specific functions. If we learn how to make them ourselves the sky's the limit.