3 ms·

It's not really a huge breakthrough. Lots of work has been done in this area for a long time now. Look into synthetic biology and biological parts: http://part

It's not really a huge breakthrough. Lots of work has been done in this area for a long time now. Look into synthetic biology and biological parts: http://parts.igem.org/Main_Page http://parts.igem.org/Main_Page This is just one way of getting to "programmable cells." Basically what they're doing is creating a database of DNA sequences that can be stringed together to create programs in cells. There's even GUI editors for this stuff, tons of standards around the syntax, etc. But Biology is messy. This stuff isn't going to be running deterministically, it requires a deep understanding of the organism, it requires a deep understanding of the overall environment an organism operates in, etc.

ny8 9y ago
As a software dev, who watches an unnecessary number of these cell internals/molecular dynamics/spontaneous self assembly vids on youtube for kicks, I am always amazed by the utter chaos that produces all these mechanisms and processes. We see nothing like this level of randomness in the already chaotic world of software development. When one works on complex projects with more than a few hundred people one constantly sees random things bumping into each other producing stuff nobody imagined. But this stuff happening inside a cell is just insane too me. Makes me feel like a cave man playing with my current set of stone age tools.
- drvdevd 9y ago
  Glad I'm not the only one... on all points -- love watching this stuff on Youtube also!
otakucode 9y ago
It IS interesting in that this appears to be general (judging by the quotation at the bottom, I haven't read the paper yet, hopefully its not behind a paywall). Back in college I read about and did a project on 'DNA computing' based on some of the early results (late 90s). Back then each instance of 'computation' had to be setup manually and very specifically engineered to the exact problem at hand. I believe they solved a Hamiltonian Path problem with 5 or 6 nodes or similar. Something they could tractably check. But the actual period of 'computation' consisted of shaking a test tube a couple seconds. Then they had to sequence the DNA to get the answer out... but hey, it was early days. The book supposed that sort of thing was a fundamental limitation of the model, that it might be usable for really difficult problems but would always have to be specifically engineered and run as a one-off experiment to get the result. This press release drove me crazy the way it was written, both insulting and deceptive, but the research sounds very interesting. They mention doing arithmetic, which would make it pretty general. I'd love to know if they have any means of doing loops. There's mention of Turing machines in the press release but I'd guess that's just something that popped up in the weird garbage can of the authors mind while grunting the thing out. Something like this combined with the ideas of 'amorphous computing' (think tons and tons of tiny unreliable processors communicating over short-range links, computation happening primarily as a large-scale emergent property of the whole system) might help things get truly weird in the future... thinking RNA paint? Sure, OK.

ny8 9y ago

As a software dev, who watches an unnecessary number of these cell internals/molecular dynamics/spontaneous self assembly vids on youtube for kicks, I am always amazed by the utter chaos that produces all these mechanisms and processes. We see nothing like this level of randomness in the already chaotic world of software development. When one works on complex projects with more than a few hundred people one constantly sees random things bumping into each other producing stuff nobody imagined. But this stuff happening inside a cell is just insane too me. Makes me feel like a cave man playing with my current set of stone age tools.

drvdevd 9y ago
Glad I'm not the only one... on all points -- love watching this stuff on Youtube also!

otakucode 9y ago

It IS interesting in that this appears to be general (judging by the quotation at the bottom, I haven't read the paper yet, hopefully its not behind a paywall). Back in college I read about and did a project on 'DNA computing' based on some of the early results (late 90s). Back then each instance of 'computation' had to be setup manually and very specifically engineered to the exact problem at hand. I believe they solved a Hamiltonian Path problem with 5 or 6 nodes or similar. Something they could tractably check. But the actual period of 'computation' consisted of shaking a test tube a couple seconds. Then they had to sequence the DNA to get the answer out... but hey, it was early days. The book supposed that sort of thing was a fundamental limitation of the model, that it might be usable for really difficult problems but would always have to be specifically engineered and run as a one-off experiment to get the result. This press release drove me crazy the way it was written, both insulting and deceptive, but the research sounds very interesting. They mention doing arithmetic, which would make it pretty general. I'd love to know if they have any means of doing loops. There's mention of Turing machines in the press release but I'd guess that's just something that popped up in the weird garbage can of the authors mind while grunting the thing out. Something like this combined with the ideas of 'amorphous computing' (think tons and tons of tiny unreliable processors communicating over short-range links, computation happening primarily as a large-scale emergent property of the whole system) might help things get truly weird in the future... thinking RNA paint? Sure, OK.