Drew Endy & Jim Thomas “Synthetic Biology Debate”
November 18th, 02008 by Stewart Brand
Terms of biocontainment
“I want to develop tools that make biology easy to engineer,” Drew Endy began. The first purpose is better understanding fundamental biological mechanisms through “learning by building.” The toolkit of Synthetic Biology starts with DNA construction and ascends through DNA parts, to devices, to standardized systems. An organism’s DNA code, and therefore the organism, can be digitally uploaded, stored, distributed, and downloaded. Life forms are programmable…
Read the rest of Stewart Brand’s Summary
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 at 1:17 pm and is filed under Seminars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Posted on November 18th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
[...] attended the Synthetic Biology Debate put on by The Long Now Foundation, and walked out scratching our heads… (in a good [...]
Posted on November 20th, 2008 at 7:56 am
[...] You can read Stewart Brand’s succinct blog post on the event here. [...]
Posted on November 23rd, 2008 at 3:55 pm
[...] responsibilities that comes with the work. I had such an opportunity a few nights ago at the Synthetic Biology Debate hosted by The Long Now. I witnessed an engaging dialog on the open and active development of [...]
Posted on November 25th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
The future “products” of synthetic biology cannot be engineered to remain in co-existence with, or subservient to any current species on Earth (including humans) because the central dogma of evolution requires that only the fittest survive.
The anticipation, or perhaps the misguided hope that envisions humans (or scientists) to be able to control “synthesized life” is based on the misconception about what it takes to create life.
The proponents of synthetic biology believe that there is a utility function to be derived by “engineering life”. Perhaps, but they fail to disclose that this could only be efficiently and economically accomplished by means of selection, rather than by screening for such a function. While screening for a new utility function poses little risk, selecting for a new utility function from a library of “synthetic” individual genetic variations is dangerous. The intrinsic difference between the processes of selection and screening would result in only two possible outcomes.
Should the screening method be used, one cannot expect to derive any sufficiently justifiable new utility function because we do not yet have sufficient information to design life rationally.
In contrast, the termination of many current species, including possibly humans is virtually predictable should the selection method be used to circumvent human inability to design life rationally. Once a library of engineered organisms, rather than an individual “new” species would be introduced into an ecosystem in an assisted attempt to select for a new utility function, the unfair survival advantage of the “new creation” is virtually guaranteed. Hence, only the fittest survive.
One needs to re-think that value proposition of “synthetic biology”. People of means, with all thy getting get understanding.
Posted on December 2nd, 2008 at 3:45 am
The audio – http://fora.tv/media/rss/Long_Now_Podcasts/podcast-2008-11-17-synth-bio-debate.mp3
Posted on December 11th, 2008 at 11:27 am
The tools for “modifying biology” that were mentioned during the seminar were never used to “synthesize autonomous biological parts or tools”. The extrapolations drawn between past performance of molecular biology and the proposed rational design of life are a priori inconsistent because life cannot be defined by such linear thinking.
Also, to be consistent with reality, if one makes an argument in favor of access to the tools of molecular biology for teenagers, as was done by the speaker, one should not object to making the nuclear weapon components to be universally accessible. Such argument is not accepted to any informed person. Proponents of “synthetic biology” can make their arguments today because no biological weapons have yet been used to the same degree as nuclear weapons.
The concept of rebuilding nature with “tools” is self-inconsistent and dangerous to all life forms, including venture capitalists of financiers of this proposed non-sense.
Posted on December 17th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
[...] Synthetic Biology: Drew Endy debates Jim thomas at the longnow foundation seminars on longterm thinking (mp3) [...]
Posted on January 2nd, 2009 at 10:10 am
An article in Physorg about home genetic engineering sent in by Steve Kurtz:
http://www.physorg.com/news149485258.html
Posted on February 16th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
“the central dogma of evolution requires that only the fittest survive.”
That is incorrect. Evolutionary pressure permits the survival of species which are *sufficiently adequate*, as opposed to only the “fittest” species.
Posted on May 5th, 2009 at 10:09 am
[...] Drew Endy and Jim Thomas and the synthetic biology debate [...]
Posted on August 2nd, 2009 at 5:28 pm
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