The Future of Technology, the Technology of the Future

Recently, there was a call for a global treaty, modeled after the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, to regulate human genetic engineering. The reference to nuclear weapons immediately called to mind the current global situation, with “rogue” states defying international calls to halt their nuclear development programs. It’s easy to envision a future with a recalcitrant state carrying out a program of human genetic engineering in violation of the so-called Genetic Heritage Safeguard Treaty. Certainly top Pentagon scientists have raised this issue. But is a 20th century solution really the best way to solve a distinctly 21st century problem?

Without dueling superpowers to keep the smaller nations in line, non-proliferation has already started to breakdown. That goes to show that a 20th century solution can’t solve a distinctly 20th century problem in the 21st century. In addition, the technology for human genetic engineering, once developed, will be far easier to conceal from inspectors and satellite reconnaissance than the equipment required to produce nuclear weapons. Thus, enforcement will be much more difficult, even with ostensibly cooperative nations. Enforcement also relies on powerful nation-states, which may be another relic of the 20th century thanks to emerging neofeudalism.

We do need global regulation of human genetic engineering, but it’s vitally important that we not reject world-changing innovations just because they’re new or scary. Genetic engineering isn’t Frankenstein. We need to look at the situation, as much as we can, in terms of what someone in the year 2100 would want us to do and not just have a knee-jerk, 20th century reaction.

This is part four 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," "Garbage In, Garbage Out," and "Implications of Fixed Returns."

In the previous post in this series, I suggested that, in 40 years, we will be able to run complex molecular simulations of the entire human body if the limiting factor is computational power. Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. We can’t generate the requisite data fast enough for the computers to crunch it. Not everything is amenable to accelerating returns.

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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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Researchers at Cornell Medical Center in New York have genetically modified a human embryo (additional coverage from The New York Times). While the embryo was not viable due to a chromosomal imbalance, the work has drawn fire from watchdog groups concerned about “designer babies.” I found a quote from Kathy Hudson, director of the Genetics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., particularly interesting:

“We’re not even close to having that technology in hand to be able to do it right,” she said, and it would be ethically unacceptable to try it when it’s unsafe.

That’s a bit of a myopic statement. She seems to be saying that we’ll never develop the techniques because it’s unethical to use them if they’re unsafe, but they can’t be made safe without testing them. The very existence of the story, however, shows that at least one ethics committee in this country approved of using unproven techniques on non-viable embryos. That’s one avenue to perfecting the necessary tools, and there may be others.

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This is part two 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," "Garbage In, Garbage Out," "Some Rates are Fixed," and "Implications of Fixed Returns."

A logical way to understand biology as an information technology is to find the commonalities between biology and the everyday computer. Biology has its central dogma, which basically says: DNA stores the instructions for life, RNA carries the instructions, and proteins execute the instructions. If we apply these functions to the components of a computer, we see that DNA is like a hard drive, RNA is the computer’s RAM, and the proteins become the CPU.

Kurzweil appears to regard each gene as its own “program” that is easily turned on or off, just like opening and closing Microsoft Word:

[W]hen the fat insulin receptor gene was turned off in mice, they were able to eat ravenously yet remain slim and obtain the health benefits of being slim. They didn’t get heart disease or diabetes and lived 20 percent longer…

I’m an adviser to a company that removes lung cells, adds a new gene, reproduces the gene-enhanced cell a million-fold and then injects it back into the body where it returns to the lungs. This has cured a fatal disease, pulmonary hypertension, in animals and is now undergoing human trials.

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This is part one 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 "Biology is not Digital," "Garbage In, Garbage Out," "Some Rates are Fixed," and "Implications of Fixed Returns."

Ray Kurzweil is a very smart man who sees the world differently than most of us. We see linear growth, he sees exponential. Kurzweil outlines, for the lay person, what exponential growth means for the future in an opinion piece in the Washington Post called “Making the World a Billion Times Better” [hattip: Siggi Becker via FriendFeed]. Kurzweil says that any information technology is “subject to what I call the ‘law of accelerating returns,’ a continual doubling of capability about every year.” In his use of the term, “information technology” isn’t limited to traditional computer science but also includes nanotechnology and biology.

Kurzweil is absolutely correct that biology is increasingly an information technology. Thanks to high-throughput technologies, research labs are generating incredibly amounts of data, more than anyone really knows how to analyze in any meaningful way. Kurzweil, however, jumps the gun a bit when he says, “The important point is this: Now that we can model, simulate and reprogram biology just like we can a computer, it will be subject to the law of accelerating returns, a doubling of capability in less than a year.” I think he’s right about the amazing things that biomedical technology will achieve—I fully expect to celebrate my 125th birthday in the year 2100—but he misses some important distinctions between biology and computers. These differences place some limits on Kurzweil’s law of accelerating returns. It’s important to understand these limitations so that we have a more accurate idea of what amazing advances we can reasonably expect.

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.