4 ms·

You'd be hard pressed to beat biological evolution... A liter of e. coli can have upwards of 100s of billions of cells. Which can double every 90 minutes. Tr

by toufka 11y ago

You'd be hard pressed to beat biological evolution... A liter of e. coli can have upwards of 100s of billions of cells. Which can double every 90 minutes. Try to run that many instances of a full environmental simulation in software. That's 1L of bacteria. Scaling that up to 100L is pretty easy. Try to do that on your super computer... A straightforward evolutionary experiment to find resistance to an antibiotic can literally run trillions of trials in a stupid simple overnight culture. Slowly increase the dose of an antibiotic in a few liters of bacteria over the course of a day or two and see what survives.

louprado 11y ago
To take it a step further, I wonder if it is possible to engineer better catalysts to speed up cell division. Evolutionary pressure should bias towards maximum reproduction rates (given a the right environmental conditions). But I wonder how much variation there is in cell division times between different species of bacteria.
- superdaniel 11y ago
  I think you're describing the field of [bioprocess engineering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioprocess_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioprocess_engineering). A lot of time is spent trying to balance cell growth with the possibility of mutations being introduced into the system. Even between different strains of E. coli the doubling rate can vary. Moreover, one also needs to contend with the fact that prokaryotes typically cannot produce very complex proteins. This leads some processes to need to use eukaryotes such as CHO cells, which are much slower.
x5n1 11y ago
Not to mention millions of years of evolution.
meric 11y ago
Perhaps it would be more practical to use biological components to accelerate software...
- ludamad 11y ago
  And then use this to train neural nets ;)
- dnautics 11y ago
  As someone who codes and does a lot of wet biology/chemistry... What calculations would you suggest be accelerated biologically?
  - meric 11y ago
    The comment was playing on how much more efficient biological components are compared to digital ones. An actual attempt to answer your question. Currently it takes quite a lot of computation to detect outlines of objects in a raster image. This is an ability innate to many animals. Suppose we had the technology to keep individual brain cells of an insect alive, and ability to interface with biological neurons, we could pass visual data through, say, an insect's eyes and brain, and get a signal on the other end that corresponds to vectors and lines that describe the object in the visual data. The insect brain is able to process images orders of magnitudes more efficiently than modern computers. Or we could make some sort of Dog helmet, hopefully without a physical connection, that somehow transmit the vector data inside the Dog's brain to our computers. Anyways, all of this looks almost impossible. We simply don't have the technology to interface with the detailed and intricate data that is present our bodies, as our brain process the world around us. I do think one day we will be overlaying data in our own eyes using some sort of neural implant. That device will probably rely on existing vision-related, biological, computational infrastructure in our minds. I wouldn't be surprised if it's two hundreds years away. P.S. Here's an article relating to the idea of putting insect brains in robots: http://www.kurzweilai.net/robots-with-insect-brains http://www.kurzweilai.net/robots-with-insect-brains It's talking about a replicated insect brain on digital hardware though.
  - ajuc 11y ago
    Sth paralelizable. Like pathfinding, or factorization. Could we do a bacteria that reproduces with part of genome changed in predictable way - like ... 100 ... ---> ... 110 ... -> ... 111 ... \ \-> ... 101 ... \ -> ... 010 ... -> ... 011 ... \-> ... 001 ... And then checks that number in some way and signalizes somehow when it arrived at solution ? For example by releasing a toxine that kill others and reproducing without changes from that point on. If we could, we could beat exponential-time problems in linear time as long as there's enough space and growth medium :)

by toufka 11y ago

louprado 11y ago

To take it a step further, I wonder if it is possible to engineer better catalysts to speed up cell division. Evolutionary pressure should bias towards maximum reproduction rates (given a the right environmental conditions). But I wonder how much variation there is in cell division times between different species of bacteria.

superdaniel 11y ago
I think you're describing the field of [bioprocess engineering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioprocess_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioprocess_engineering). A lot of time is spent trying to balance cell growth with the possibility of mutations being introduced into the system. Even between different strains of E. coli the doubling rate can vary. Moreover, one also needs to contend with the fact that prokaryotes typically cannot produce very complex proteins. This leads some processes to need to use eukaryotes such as CHO cells, which are much slower.

x5n1 11y ago

Not to mention millions of years of evolution.

meric 11y ago

Perhaps it would be more practical to use biological components to accelerate software...

ludamad 11y ago
And then use this to train neural nets ;)
dnautics 11y ago
As someone who codes and does a lot of wet biology/chemistry... What calculations would you suggest be accelerated biologically?
- meric 11y ago
  The comment was playing on how much more efficient biological components are compared to digital ones. An actual attempt to answer your question. Currently it takes quite a lot of computation to detect outlines of objects in a raster image. This is an ability innate to many animals. Suppose we had the technology to keep individual brain cells of an insect alive, and ability to interface with biological neurons, we could pass visual data through, say, an insect's eyes and brain, and get a signal on the other end that corresponds to vectors and lines that describe the object in the visual data. The insect brain is able to process images orders of magnitudes more efficiently than modern computers. Or we could make some sort of Dog helmet, hopefully without a physical connection, that somehow transmit the vector data inside the Dog's brain to our computers. Anyways, all of this looks almost impossible. We simply don't have the technology to interface with the detailed and intricate data that is present our bodies, as our brain process the world around us. I do think one day we will be overlaying data in our own eyes using some sort of neural implant. That device will probably rely on existing vision-related, biological, computational infrastructure in our minds. I wouldn't be surprised if it's two hundreds years away. P.S. Here's an article relating to the idea of putting insect brains in robots: http://www.kurzweilai.net/robots-with-insect-brains http://www.kurzweilai.net/robots-with-insect-brains It's talking about a replicated insect brain on digital hardware though.
- ajuc 11y ago
  Sth paralelizable. Like pathfinding, or factorization. Could we do a bacteria that reproduces with part of genome changed in predictable way - like ... 100 ... ---> ... 110 ... -> ... 111 ... \ \-> ... 101 ... \ -> ... 010 ... -> ... 011 ... \-> ... 001 ... And then checks that number in some way and signalizes somehow when it arrived at solution ? For example by releasing a toxine that kill others and reproducing without changes from that point on. If we could, we could beat exponential-time problems in linear time as long as there's enough space and growth medium :)