5 ms·

How far are we away from making tiny robots that can float along in the blood stream and wirelessly beam back DNA and virus patterns they've identified?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jfarlow 9y ago
Tiny robots already exist - they're called proteins (of which Cas9 is one). We're just now starting to be able to program these proteins de novo. Reading DNA - well, DNA is inside a nucleus inside a cell. That's tricky to get that information out. But if you're just trying to trigger a signal iff a case exists (i.e. viral infection), well, that too already exists - it's you're immune system. Problem with wireless beaming is power. The amount of power required to transmit a (radio) signal through centimeters of human tissue is just not a biologically reasonable amount. If you want to use light, well, that's getting interesting - there are a lot of ways that biology can create and read light (see bioluminescence and plants, respectively). There is currently a lot of research and a number of companies that are building biological sensors that you can 'wear' that can peer into your bloodstream that get access to some information. But the bandwidth is not such that you could transmit much more than a single gradient of signal, much less a few gigabytes of genetic information. But the research presented here is how to do high-throughput analysis in an academic manner very much outside of a live organism, and in a consumable laboratory setting. This is a useful technique using relatively accessible materials to analytically check that a study's gene therapies are not too far off their targets.
- gozur88 9y ago
  >If you want to use light, well, that's getting interesting - there are a lot of ways that biology can create and read light (see bioluminescence and plants, respectively). Periodically someone alters an animal such that it glows under UV light. Seems like it ought to be possible to equip people with a "check engine light" if, say, their blood glucose or Troponin T levels are too high.
  - jfarlow 9y ago
    Yep - that's on it's way ;-) At this point, having such a 'check engine light', or, for instance, having a cluster of 10 cells under your wrist that change color (which is subsequently sensed by your iWatch) is just a (very challenging and expensive) engineering problem. It's entirely scientifically reasonable to have such biological readouts sensing a number of different biological states. You already blush, perspire, increase heart-rate, etc. - hooking up those same responses to change the pigment in 10 particular cells on your wrist is not much of a stretch of our current tech. It's only logistical sci-fi, not theoretical sci-fi.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    People are working on "check engine tattoos" https://www.technologyreview.com/s/411770/the-glucose-monitoring-tattoo/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/411770/the-glucose-monito...
amenghra 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Voyage_II:_Destination_Brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Voyage_II:_Destinati...
indigo0086 9y ago
How far are we away from programming my psoriasis away lol.
- nwah1 9y ago
  New psoriasis drugs are coming out all the time, it seems. My wife is on Stelara and it has cleared her up, but honestly just moving to a moderately healthy lifestyle had taken her from bad to almost not noticeable. If one were truly committed to a healthy lifestyle, I think that can get you almost all of the way there, without drugs.
justifier 9y ago
we can make transport robots from dna.. http://www.nature.com/news/dna-robot-could-kill-cancer-cells-1.10047 http://www.nature.com/news/dna-robot-could-kill-cancer-cells... this lecture from 2014 goes into more detail: hhttps://youtu.be/aA-H0L3eEo0?t=453 https://youtu.be/aA-H0L3eEo0?t=453 ; talking about using essentially biological logic gates then they announced human trial on a patient with late stage leukemia(o) ..the announcement with sobering top comment referencing protein built robots mentioned elsewhere in this thread(i) then a partnership with pfizer(ii) then crickets(iii) (o) https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2014/12/ido-bachelet-announces-2015-human-trial.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2014/12/ido-bachelet-announces... (i) https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2015/05/pfizer-partnering-with-ido-bachelet-on.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2015/05/pfizer-partnering-with... (ii) https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/2qkjgc/short_clip_of_prof_ido_bachelet_confirming_that/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/2qkjgc/short_cl... (iii) https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/3czhpx/any_information_about_the_development_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/3czhpx/any_info...
fgimenez 9y ago
While robots are a stretch, there are a ton of companies taking blood samples and sequencing DNA floating around. Karius does exactly what you mentioned by sequencing and searching for bacterial/viral dna in your blood. Guardant and Grail do this to detect and diagnose cancer from tumor DNA in your blood. Naterra and Ariosa do this to diagnose genetic diseases in fetuses of pregnant women.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jfarlow 9y ago

Tiny robots already exist - they're called proteins (of which Cas9 is one). We're just now starting to be able to program these proteins de novo. Reading DNA - well, DNA is inside a nucleus inside a cell. That's tricky to get that information out. But if you're just trying to trigger a signal iff a case exists (i.e. viral infection), well, that too already exists - it's you're immune system. Problem with wireless beaming is power. The amount of power required to transmit a (radio) signal through centimeters of human tissue is just not a biologically reasonable amount. If you want to use light, well, that's getting interesting - there are a lot of ways that biology can create and read light (see bioluminescence and plants, respectively). There is currently a lot of research and a number of companies that are building biological sensors that you can 'wear' that can peer into your bloodstream that get access to some information. But the bandwidth is not such that you could transmit much more than a single gradient of signal, much less a few gigabytes of genetic information. But the research presented here is how to do high-throughput analysis in an academic manner very much outside of a live organism, and in a consumable laboratory setting. This is a useful technique using relatively accessible materials to analytically check that a study's gene therapies are not too far off their targets.

gozur88 9y ago
>If you want to use light, well, that's getting interesting - there are a lot of ways that biology can create and read light (see bioluminescence and plants, respectively). Periodically someone alters an animal such that it glows under UV light. Seems like it ought to be possible to equip people with a "check engine light" if, say, their blood glucose or Troponin T levels are too high.
- jfarlow 9y ago
  Yep - that's on it's way ;-) At this point, having such a 'check engine light', or, for instance, having a cluster of 10 cells under your wrist that change color (which is subsequently sensed by your iWatch) is just a (very challenging and expensive) engineering problem. It's entirely scientifically reasonable to have such biological readouts sensing a number of different biological states. You already blush, perspire, increase heart-rate, etc. - hooking up those same responses to change the pigment in 10 particular cells on your wrist is not much of a stretch of our current tech. It's only logistical sci-fi, not theoretical sci-fi.
- adrianN 9y ago
  People are working on "check engine tattoos" https://www.technologyreview.com/s/411770/the-glucose-monitoring-tattoo/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/411770/the-glucose-monito...

amenghra 9y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Voyage_II:_Destination_Brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Voyage_II:_Destinati...

indigo0086 9y ago

How far are we away from programming my psoriasis away lol.

nwah1 9y ago
New psoriasis drugs are coming out all the time, it seems. My wife is on Stelara and it has cleared her up, but honestly just moving to a moderately healthy lifestyle had taken her from bad to almost not noticeable. If one were truly committed to a healthy lifestyle, I think that can get you almost all of the way there, without drugs.

justifier 9y ago

we can make transport robots from dna.. http://www.nature.com/news/dna-robot-could-kill-cancer-cells-1.10047 http://www.nature.com/news/dna-robot-could-kill-cancer-cells... this lecture from 2014 goes into more detail: hhttps://youtu.be/aA-H0L3eEo0?t=453 https://youtu.be/aA-H0L3eEo0?t=453 ; talking about using essentially biological logic gates then they announced human trial on a patient with late stage leukemia(o) ..the announcement with sobering top comment referencing protein built robots mentioned elsewhere in this thread(i) then a partnership with pfizer(ii) then crickets(iii) (o) https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2014/12/ido-bachelet-announces-2015-human-trial.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2014/12/ido-bachelet-announces... (i) https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2015/05/pfizer-partnering-with-ido-bachelet-on.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2015/05/pfizer-partnering-with... (ii) https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/2qkjgc/short_clip_of_prof_ido_bachelet_confirming_that/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/2qkjgc/short_cl... (iii) https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/3czhpx/any_information_about_the_development_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/3czhpx/any_info...

fgimenez 9y ago

While robots are a stretch, there are a ton of companies taking blood samples and sequencing DNA floating around. Karius does exactly what you mentioned by sequencing and searching for bacterial/viral dna in your blood. Guardant and Grail do this to detect and diagnose cancer from tumor DNA in your blood. Naterra and Ariosa do this to diagnose genetic diseases in fetuses of pregnant women.