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I'm very excited to see where we'll be in another 10 years. The possibilities in terms of medical and industrial applications seems hard to overstate. Related,

by suby 6y ago

I'm very excited to see where we'll be in another 10 years. The possibilities in terms of medical and industrial applications seems hard to overstate. Related, but one of the best talks I've ever seen was this 2018 talk on the subject. It gets into how organisms seem to have bioelectrical patterns that store information separately from genomic, anatomical states. These bioelectrical patterns play a huge role in developmental processes, as they appear to control how the organism is structured at a high level. As a layman and a programmer, to me it sounds like the genome is the actual implementation of a function and the bioelectrical pattern is the sequence of functions you want to execute. They're able to manipulate these bioelectrical patterns to do things like replace a worms tail with another head. It's absolutely crazy to think about what could be possible here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg&t=0s&index=6&list=LLezTLfb6xy-ZOXNY3QWMfFQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg&t=0s&index=6&lis...

rch 6y ago
It's worth taking a look at some of the simulation software supporting this field. Lots of potential. "Bioelectric Tissue Simulation Engine (BETSE). Bio-realistic modelling of dynamic electrochemical phenomena in gap junction-networked cell collectives with a focus on spatio-temporal pattern formation." https://gitlab.com/betse https://gitlab.com/betse
flobosg 6y ago
Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18700328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18700328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698
koeng 6y ago
It's pretty hard to compare biology to programming, mainly because analogies start to break down and it becomes fundamentally different. The genome is just a collection of atoms that has figured out how to trick other atoms do work (in order to make more copies of itself). And it will do weird, weird things to accomplish that task.
- throwaway316943 6y ago
  Forgive my limited knowledge of biochemistry but isn’t the gist of it that nucleotides code for and combine to form amino acids which when put in certain sequences form enzymes and proteins whose structure then enables some function so it is much like the paper tape model of a computer except instead of paper with holes in it you have a polymer with a few types of “hooks” that allows it to fold into an origami machine that can manipulate or join with other bits of paper to do things? This is different from programming a computer which relies on reading instructions from such a tape but only in that the computer and its functions/actuators are made of tape. It may be a strained metaphor but it is how I conceptualize it. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
  - dsign 6y ago
    That's is essentially correct. But even if we discount the steroids this "origami machine" is on, and assume is an un-fancy origami machine, it still defies easy reasoning. Or at least, the kind of reasoning we are used to when programming digital computers.
    - throwaway316943 6y ago
      Absolutely, I don’t deny the complexity! I still wonder at the mind boggling accomplishments of evolution. It’s like being able to create a working car out of nothing but wet spaghetti!

by suby 6y ago

rch 6y ago

It's worth taking a look at some of the simulation software supporting this field. Lots of potential. "Bioelectric Tissue Simulation Engine (BETSE). Bio-realistic modelling of dynamic electrochemical phenomena in gap junction-networked cell collectives with a focus on spatio-temporal pattern formation." https://gitlab.com/betse https://gitlab.com/betse

flobosg 6y ago

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18700328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18700328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698

koeng 6y ago

It's pretty hard to compare biology to programming, mainly because analogies start to break down and it becomes fundamentally different. The genome is just a collection of atoms that has figured out how to trick other atoms do work (in order to make more copies of itself). And it will do weird, weird things to accomplish that task.

throwaway316943 6y ago
Forgive my limited knowledge of biochemistry but isn’t the gist of it that nucleotides code for and combine to form amino acids which when put in certain sequences form enzymes and proteins whose structure then enables some function so it is much like the paper tape model of a computer except instead of paper with holes in it you have a polymer with a few types of “hooks” that allows it to fold into an origami machine that can manipulate or join with other bits of paper to do things? This is different from programming a computer which relies on reading instructions from such a tape but only in that the computer and its functions/actuators are made of tape. It may be a strained metaphor but it is how I conceptualize it. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
- dsign 6y ago
  That's is essentially correct. But even if we discount the steroids this "origami machine" is on, and assume is an un-fancy origami machine, it still defies easy reasoning. Or at least, the kind of reasoning we are used to when programming digital computers.
  - throwaway316943 6y ago
    Absolutely, I don’t deny the complexity! I still wonder at the mind boggling accomplishments of evolution. It’s like being able to create a working car out of nothing but wet spaghetti!