4 ms·

One small but exciting step in the right direction. Can you imagine in the future, we could have translations from logical code to biochemical pathways. You co

One small but exciting step in the right direction. Can you imagine in the future, we could have translations from logical code to biochemical pathways. You could specify the dependencies of a cell you are building in a similar fashion to (maven, npm, make). Using bioinformatics data to configure your cells behaviour. There would be compilation errors were cells would not be stable or materialise, and runtime errors in which a metabolic or other type of pathway fails, causing the cell to throw an exception (dies/ or emits other action). I would truly relish the moment when my cell gets a virus.

epmaybe 8y ago
Seems like synthetic biology is a field you should look into! It's very exciting!
- mothsonasloth 8y ago
  Ill need to look into it. My background is in Biomed but I joined the dark side and became a computer scientist instead.
  - hexscrews 8y ago
    You may also be interested in the field of biological computing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_computing#Biochemical_computers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_computing#Biochemic...). Since your background covers both biology and computer science. Plus the field is new enough that you could be a part of some exciting research.
  - epmaybe 8y ago
    I wouldn't call it the dark side, I think there can always be an overlap in one's skillset.
    - dnautics 8y ago
      having been a biochemist (and maybe going back) but also a professional programmer, I am very pessimistic about this. One time, though, I used ruby to scrape a chinese website where they made 'public' the genome of an organism. They clearly weren't interested in actually making it public (as the sequences were very hard to pull), and after we had gotten the data they made it impossible and took down announcements that it was public, so sometimes real computer skills are welcome!
  - najarvg 8y ago
    Slightly OT but related interesting trivia. Look up a language called CRN++ developed by UT Austin for "programming deterministic (mass-action) chemical kinetics in performing computations". Press release type article here - https://interestingengineering.com/synthetic-biology-gets-a-new-molecular-programming-language-called-crn https://interestingengineering.com/synthetic-biology-gets-a-... ArXiv abstract here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.07430 https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.07430 Git repo here: https://github.com/marko-vasic/crnPlusPlus https://github.com/marko-vasic/crnPlusPlus Hope to see some interesting synthetic molecules published by you :-)

epmaybe 8y ago

Seems like synthetic biology is a field you should look into! It's very exciting!

mothsonasloth 8y ago
Ill need to look into it. My background is in Biomed but I joined the dark side and became a computer scientist instead.
- hexscrews 8y ago
  You may also be interested in the field of biological computing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_computing#Biochemical_computers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_computing#Biochemic...). Since your background covers both biology and computer science. Plus the field is new enough that you could be a part of some exciting research.
- epmaybe 8y ago
  I wouldn't call it the dark side, I think there can always be an overlap in one's skillset.
  - dnautics 8y ago
    having been a biochemist (and maybe going back) but also a professional programmer, I am very pessimistic about this. One time, though, I used ruby to scrape a chinese website where they made 'public' the genome of an organism. They clearly weren't interested in actually making it public (as the sequences were very hard to pull), and after we had gotten the data they made it impossible and took down announcements that it was public, so sometimes real computer skills are welcome!
- najarvg 8y ago
  Slightly OT but related interesting trivia. Look up a language called CRN++ developed by UT Austin for "programming deterministic (mass-action) chemical kinetics in performing computations". Press release type article here - https://interestingengineering.com/synthetic-biology-gets-a-new-molecular-programming-language-called-crn https://interestingengineering.com/synthetic-biology-gets-a-... ArXiv abstract here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.07430 https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.07430 Git repo here: https://github.com/marko-vasic/crnPlusPlus https://github.com/marko-vasic/crnPlusPlus Hope to see some interesting synthetic molecules published by you :-)