3 ms·

I’m trying to figure out how to ship DNA effectively. It’s really inefficient right now, so I’m genetically engineering bacterial spores to make it a lot better

• webmaven 6y ago
  Hopefully the spores are non-viable in some way (sterile, require an exotic growth medium, terminator genes, etc.)?
  • koeng 6y ago
    They won’t be. I definitely thought deeply about that aspect, but am choosing to not make them non-viable for the following reasons: 1. Payloads are in domesticated strains, which are less efficient than wild strains, which are already global 2. Exotic growth media requirements make the cells only for wealthy organizations, which is status quo and aren’t target audience Of course, if good reason comes to change that, I would.
    • webmaven 6y ago
      Exotic in this case just means uncommon or rare in the wild, not expensive. Something like requiring both salt and aspartame would help prevent gene transfer in the wild (to related or unrelated strains) as well as making it unlikely to grow on its own.
      • koeng 6y ago
        I would love to have something like that, but unfortunately that’s a really hard problem in itself, so I’d likely only start working on it once the need arises
        • webmaven 6y ago
          Presumably you're working on this as a technique for widespread use by other parties, which means you can't control what DNA is being transported. Minimizing the chances of escape seems only prudent.