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The amount of knowledge we lack with regards to species still surprises me. We can do pretty well with plants and animals, but we don't even have good genetic a

The amount of knowledge we lack with regards to species still surprises me. We can do pretty well with plants and animals, but we don't even have good genetic analysis on types of mushrooms that grow on the surface, picking up any field guide often results in "this looks quite like it, but the ones from this part of the world make people sick and we don't actually know if they're related".

toufka 10y ago
We really don't have a good grasp even on the variety of plants and animals. We do know a lot about the foundations of each organism's genetics, but we're just now peeking into their variation. And that is precisely why you see biotech starting to get interesting and useful above and beyond basic discovery. When we start looking not just for 'how life works', but for 'how does it glow', 'how does it climb', 'how does it live so long', we start getting pretty cool answers. But we're JUST starting. Much of what know comes from a short list of organisms (that can grown in lab conditions). There is a 'model organism' [1] for the simplest organism (that can grown in lab) for each step up the ladder of biological complexity (towards humans). - bacteria : E coli - eukaryote : yeast - multi-cellular : nematode - plant : arabidopsis - nervous system : fruit fly - spinal cord : zebrafish - mammal : mouse - primate : monkey There are definitely others (sorry for leaving out your favorite model...), but in general, we know a lot about these model organisms. And that covers a wide gamut, but still we know very little specifics about everything in between. Further, because we've been so focused on (funding) human health, we know a lot about how humans work. But what we've missed is all the ancillary tech that could be used to support human health, or human society/technology/industry at large. CRISPR proteins (and its similar tech) which will end up revolutionizing our biological tehcnology come from non-human-like, and otherwise unfundable hobby research. PCR/GFP all came from looking at weird things and saying, "that's cool, how does that work?" not "I want to cure cancer". It's hard to get funding to study how various bacteria battle each other in the soil when you cannot know how it might affect human health... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_organism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_organism
- spynxic 10y ago
  > that's cool, how does that work?" not "I want to cure cancer" With regards to your final note: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-down_and_bottom-up_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-down_and_bottom-up_design

toufka 10y ago

We really don't have a good grasp even on the variety of plants and animals. We do know a lot about the foundations of each organism's genetics, but we're just now peeking into their variation. And that is precisely why you see biotech starting to get interesting and useful above and beyond basic discovery. When we start looking not just for 'how life works', but for 'how does it glow', 'how does it climb', 'how does it live so long', we start getting pretty cool answers. But we're JUST starting. Much of what know comes from a short list of organisms (that can grown in lab conditions). There is a 'model organism' [1] for the simplest organism (that can grown in lab) for each step up the ladder of biological complexity (towards humans). - bacteria : E coli - eukaryote : yeast - multi-cellular : nematode - plant : arabidopsis - nervous system : fruit fly - spinal cord : zebrafish - mammal : mouse - primate : monkey There are definitely others (sorry for leaving out your favorite model...), but in general, we know a lot about these model organisms. And that covers a wide gamut, but still we know very little specifics about everything in between. Further, because we've been so focused on (funding) human health, we know a lot about how humans work. But what we've missed is all the ancillary tech that could be used to support human health, or human society/technology/industry at large. CRISPR proteins (and its similar tech) which will end up revolutionizing our biological tehcnology come from non-human-like, and otherwise unfundable hobby research. PCR/GFP all came from looking at weird things and saying, "that's cool, how does that work?" not "I want to cure cancer". It's hard to get funding to study how various bacteria battle each other in the soil when you cannot know how it might affect human health... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_organism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_organism

spynxic 10y ago
> that's cool, how does that work?" not "I want to cure cancer" With regards to your final note: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-down_and_bottom-up_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-down_and_bottom-up_design