3 ms·
> the length of stretches of DNA that can be synthesized with these machines will likely increase from about 200 base pairs today to as many as 7000 base pairs
by thomastjeffery 3y ago
> the length of stretches of DNA that can be synthesized with these machines will likely increase from about 200 base pairs today to as many as 7000 base pairs
Interesting. What about the process puts a limit on sequence length?
> It also calls for build-in protections, such as software that allows the manufacturer to screen all requests for DNA sequences prior to synthesis.
So DRM? Please go read a book or a blog post or something, and learn why that won't help at all.
- dogma1138 3y agoI don’t think there would be any controls that you won’t be able to bypass once this tech hits the market. You can already order plasmids, various viruses and bacteria with custom sequenced and crispr kits online. This is one tech that really needs to be tightly controlled as the capabilities to create really nasty things would outpace our ability to mitigate or protect against them. This is likely the true risk of democratized manufacturing rather than the red herring that is 3D printed guns and other such nonsense.
- GlibMonkeyDeath 3y ago"Conventional" (i.e. phophoramidite) DNA synthesis has a coupling efficiency of ~99% - so the yield after 100-200 bases is about zero. It's been possible for a long time, though, to splice together these short stretches to get longer stretches. But that process has been very low yield and required a lot of skill. As a demonstration, 20 years ago Cello et al demonstrated synthesizing an active polio virus (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) Although it might be easier to make long stretches of DNA with these machines, it would still take a lot of skill to translate these sequences into a weapon. Anyone with those skills could have already been doing this.