The Future of Technology, the Technology of the Future

This is part three in a five-part series called "The Limits of Accelerating Returns" that focuses on the limitations of Ray Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns when applied to molecular biology and biomedical technology, including longevity treatments. The other articles in the series are "The Limits of Accelerating Returns," "Biology is not Digital," "Some Rates are Fixed," and "Implications of Fixed Returns."

In his essay called “Making the World a Billion Times Better,” Ray Kurzweil writes, “The approximately 23,000 genes in our cells are basically software programs, and we are making exponential gains in modeling and simulating the information processes that cracking the genome code has unlocked.” The problem is that genes are only roughly analogous to software programs, as I discussed in the previous post in this series, and simulating the information processes of the genome is non-trivial in the extreme.

Let’s take a very simple example of an artificial genome called a “repressilator” that was added to bacteria as a proof-of-concept of synthetic biology and biological simulation. The repressilator’s machinery consists of three genes, each of which turns off one of the other genes. When one of the genes is active, it turns off one of the other genes. Meanwhile, the third gene is in the processing of shutting down the first. When the first gene is turned off, the second one turns on, and stats shutting down the third gene. Thus, there’s a cycle or oscillation to the activation of the genes (the name of the construct is a contraction of “repression” and “oscillation”).

The system also includes a fourth gene that produces a visible signal so that the oscillation can be tracked. This seems like a pretty straightforward system. The scientists who developed it even did a lot of modeling to figure out how to optimize the oscillations before they went to the trouble of building the thing.

But it didn’t work the way they expected.

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Scientists in Massachusetts have engineered bacteria to penetrate tumors in mice and destroy the tumor from the inside out. As The Speculist points out, this essentially makes them a very rudimentary nanorobot. On the other coast, researchers have created new enzymes [hattip: CRN] to carry out reaction that are not catalyzed by any enzyme anywhere. The technique, though computationally intense, can potentially be expanded to virtually any reaction. That means the new enzymes, similar to the bacteria, are some of the first nanomachines and the forerunners of possible molecular assemblers.

There are interesting possibilities for combining the two technologies, as well. For example, rather than using their current method for killing tumors, the bacteria could instead use a novel enzyme to convert an inert substance into a lethal one. This approach would allow medication to be targeted directly to the tumor while minimizing primary or side effects in healthy tissues. But why limit it to fighting tumors? Get the bacteria to hang out in your liver and help process toxins. Or they could speed healing after a heart attack or major surgery. The ability to add new activities to our bodies will be a boon to 21st century medicine.

When you hear the term “synthetic biology,” it conjures up images of superbugs and pandemic plagues reminiscent of Stephen King’s The Stand or Operation Dark Winter. Some of the most prominent minds in the nascent field are crucially aware of this public perception and are trying to counteract it. Take the International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition as an example. When I was in grad school, we referred to it as “bug wars,” but organizer Draw Endy put the kibosh on that precisely because it sounds like the work of bioterrorists rather than legitimate scientists.

Beyond the name, iGEM serves as a showcase for what synthetic biology can currently do. Artificial blood that can be freeze-dried and rehydrated when needed. Biofuel production. The winning entry—bacteria that automatically assign roles rather than having to be individually tailored—is more akin to a compiler for software source code than traditional biotechnology. This is just today; imagine what could be possible in five or ten years.

Endy and colleagues are not just starry-eyed dreamers. As you can hear on NPR’s Science Friday [hat tip: Futurismic], Endy encourages open discussion of our concerns. Not just amongst scientists but across society and across the world. Even by the standards of academic science, the practitioners of synthetic biology are very open about their ideas, their research, and their discoveries. They understand the dangers of the technology, but they also know that you can’t suppress it. By encouraging openness and sharing, scientists can stay ahead of the bad guys. Not only can we anticipate what a superbug might be and how to respond, we can develop the cure before it ever arrives.

I like J. Craig Venter because he’s sharp and a maverick; I dislike him because he courts controversy and seems at least somewhat arrogant. There was just such a controversy over the summer when a bioethics group took issue with Venter for applying for a patent on a minimal bacterial genome, which is the first step on the road to developing artificial life.

Artificial life is one field within synthetic biology, a specialty devoted to getting lifeforms to perform functions that are wholly novel and not found in other organisms. Getting a tobacco plant to glow in the dark is impressive, but it’s just genetic engineering since the scientists only copied the “glowing” gene from fireflies into the plant. But getting bacteria to take a photograph is a trick of synthetic biology since there’s not an organism on the planet that captures snapshots. Artificial life is another step beyond such clever tricks as it aims to create whole organisms that do not exist naturally.

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