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I don't think that "encapsulation" thing will hold much water, pun intended. The bacteria have to be exposed to the external water, so that barrier is necessari

I don't think that "encapsulation" thing will hold much water, pun intended. The bacteria have to be exposed to the external water, so that barrier is necessarily quite thin. Also quite permeable, so there may very well be detritus from dead bacteria leaking, including DNA molecules. That's a risk which has to be evaluated. Some people don't want to take any risk of artificial genes getting spread into the environment, some will even use this to make up the conspiracy theories for the next pandemic. More plausibly, many of these genetically modified bacteria contain certain antibiotical resistance genes that can get passed on to other bacteria.

belkarx 4y ago
> self-replicating bacteria it also has the same ethical concerns as any other freely-replicating tech (unless I'm misunderstanding how this works)
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  No, not really. You'd use a strain that can't synthesize a certain molecule and then have that molecule inside that capsule. If it gets out, it can't reproduce any more. Those bacteria also can't compete in a natural environment because they evolved in a lab and were engineered to do something detrimental to the usual "microbial fitness". The only risk worth discussing is that they could pass on antibacterial resistance genes to other bacteria. Even that is not really that much of a risk, because the resistance genes used in such studies are usually already quite widespread.
  - imchillyb 4y ago
    That's the exact plot of Jurrasic Park. I'm not saying that's what's going to happen. I'm just pointing out that's how the scientists were supposedly containing the dinos. 'Can't produce the amino acid lysene.' Again, I'm not saying it's not feasible to prevent 'that' molecule from synthesizing a certain molecule, but observation tells us that life really does find a way...
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
      Observation of Jurassic Park? Yes, it's possible to reacquire the capability to produce something like an aminoacid. But because that has to happen extremely quickly, before the organism dies, that's extremely unlikely. And then that bacterium is still vastly inferior to all the other ones. And it doesn't have any scary properties in the first place.
    - feet 4y ago
      Fortunately, the world is not a movie and there are many ways to contain organisms by making them depend on non-canonical amino acids which do not exist in nature. Making them depend on multiple means that them acquiring the ability to produce them is astronomically low

belkarx 4y ago

> self-replicating bacteria it also has the same ethical concerns as any other freely-replicating tech (unless I'm misunderstanding how this works)

bayesian_horse 4y ago
No, not really. You'd use a strain that can't synthesize a certain molecule and then have that molecule inside that capsule. If it gets out, it can't reproduce any more. Those bacteria also can't compete in a natural environment because they evolved in a lab and were engineered to do something detrimental to the usual "microbial fitness". The only risk worth discussing is that they could pass on antibacterial resistance genes to other bacteria. Even that is not really that much of a risk, because the resistance genes used in such studies are usually already quite widespread.
- imchillyb 4y ago
  That's the exact plot of Jurrasic Park. I'm not saying that's what's going to happen. I'm just pointing out that's how the scientists were supposedly containing the dinos. 'Can't produce the amino acid lysene.' Again, I'm not saying it's not feasible to prevent 'that' molecule from synthesizing a certain molecule, but observation tells us that life really does find a way...
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    Observation of Jurassic Park? Yes, it's possible to reacquire the capability to produce something like an aminoacid. But because that has to happen extremely quickly, before the organism dies, that's extremely unlikely. And then that bacterium is still vastly inferior to all the other ones. And it doesn't have any scary properties in the first place.
  - feet 4y ago
    Fortunately, the world is not a movie and there are many ways to contain organisms by making them depend on non-canonical amino acids which do not exist in nature. Making them depend on multiple means that them acquiring the ability to produce them is astronomically low