[Graeme]

Congress, Obama Take Sudden Interest in Synthetic Biology

Congress explicitly took up the subject of synthetic biology for the first time Thursday during a hastily convened hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The Wired crowd has been talking about how to engineer biological machines for years, but Craig Venter’s announcement last week that he’s created a synthetic cell has drawn the attention of the very highest levels of government.

The hearing came shortly after President Barack Obama ordered a six-month review of synthetic biology by a panel of scientific stars.

The House committee members seemed primarily interested in the potential of synthetic biology to create micro-organisms that could effectively produce hydrocarbons that could be used to power the nation’s transportation system.

“Synthetic biology also has the potential to reduce our dependence on oil and to address
climate change,” said Henry Waxman, D-California, the chair of the committee. “Research is underway to develop microbes that would produce oil, giving us a renewable fuel that could be used interchangeably with gasoline without creating more global warming pollution. Research could also lead to oil-eating microbes, an application that, as the Gulf spill unfortunately demonstrates, would be extremely useful.”

wired

[EnergyUnlimited]

Congress, Obama Take Sudden Interest in Synthetic Biology

“Synthetic biology also has the potential to reduce our dependence on oil and to address
climate change,” said Henry Waxman, D-California, the chair of the committee. “Research is underway to develop microbes that would produce oil, giving us a renewable fuel that could be used interchangeably with gasoline without creating more global warming pollution.

However the limiting factor in respect of yield of photosynthesis now is concentration of CO2 in air.
We already have microorganisms producing a lot of oil substituting fats (certain algae species) but aerial concentration of CO2 is far to low to make much use of these.
And concentration of CO2 in air cannot be addressed with genetic meddling in bacterial cell.

Research could also lead to oil-eating microbes, an application that, as the Gulf spill unfortunately demonstrates, would be extremely useful.”

We have plenty of such microbes and they are already doing job quite well (oxygen concentrations in contaminated areas of GOM are now considerably dropping as a result of this activity).
So there is no practical need to produce new ones...

Summary:
They are wasting time and taxpayer money if they really investigate issues discussed above.
Some more mundane, much more down to Earth applications are possible though.

[Carlhole]

So there is no practical need to produce new ones...

You're quite a laughable person, EU.

[Homesteader]

Congress, Obama Take Sudden Interest in Synthetic Biology

“Synthetic biology also has the potential to reduce our dependence on oil and to address
climate change,” said Henry Waxman, D-California, the chair of the committee. “Research is underway to develop microbes that would produce oil, giving us a renewable fuel that could be used interchangeably with gasoline without creating more global warming pollution.

However the limiting factor in respect of yield of photosynthesis now is concentration of CO2 in air.
We already have microorganisms producing a lot of oil substituting fats (certain algae species) but aerial concentration of CO2 is far to low to make much use of these.
And concentration of CO2 in air cannot be addressed with genetic meddling in bacterial cell.

Research could also lead to oil-eating microbes, an application that, as the Gulf spill unfortunately demonstrates, would be extremely useful.”

We have plenty of such microbes and they are already doing job quite well (oxygen concentrations in contaminated areas of GOM are now considerably dropping as a result of this activity).
So there is no practical need to produce new ones...

Summary:
They are wasting time and taxpayer money if they really investigate issues discussed above.
Some more mundane, much more down to Earth applications are possible though.

Agreed, simply more technocopian claptrap put out to the masses to maintain the illusion of belief and hope in a bright cornucopian future.

[Homesteader]

Congress, Obama Take Sudden Interest in Synthetic Biology

“Synthetic biology also has the potential to reduce our dependence on oil and to address
climate change,” said Henry Waxman, D-California, the chair of the committee. “Research is underway to develop microbes that would produce oil, giving us a renewable fuel that could be used interchangeably with gasoline without creating more global warming pollution.

However the limiting factor in respect of yield of photosynthesis now is concentration of CO2 in air.
We already have microorganisms producing a lot of oil substituting fats (certain algae species) but aerial concentration of CO2 is far to low to make much use of these.
And concentration of CO2 in air cannot be addressed with genetic meddling in bacterial cell.

Research could also lead to oil-eating microbes, an application that, as the Gulf spill unfortunately demonstrates, would be extremely useful.”

We have plenty of such microbes and they are already doing job quite well (oxygen concentrations in contaminated areas of GOM are now considerably dropping as a result of this activity).
So there is no practical need to produce new ones...

Summary:
They are wasting time and taxpayer money if they really investigate issues discussed above.
Some more mundane, much more down to Earth applications are possible though.

Agreed, simply more technocopian claptrap put out to the masses to maintain the illusion of belief and hope in a bright cornucopian future.

I mean, honestly, how does any thinking person actually believe that a system/industry centered around oil producing algae will ever be able to capture enough CO2 from the atmosphere in to make a difference in continuing BAU?

Or that they will significantly improve on oil consuming bacteria that have evolved to utilize oil as an energy source over a couple of hundred million years?

[Graeme]

Synthetic genome resets biotech goals

Synthetic biology is a field with an audacious but ultimately utilitarian goal: to redesign the building blocks of life to serve the needs of humanity. It is also an endeavour that challenges clear-cut definitions of natural versus artificial life.

Last week's announcement by researchers in the United States that they have created a synthetic copy of a bacterial genome and used it to commandeer the cell of a closely related species is a landmark on both fronts (D. G. Gibson et al. Science doi:10.1126/science.1190719; 2010). The group's success, much-anticipated by the scientific community, provides tools for manipulating the genome on a significantly larger scale than has previously been possible. "I think this is an important technique towards the ultimate goal of completely redesigning genomes," says Ron Weiss, a synthetic biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. The achievement also demonstrates just how challenging a road synthetic biologists have embarked on.

Potential applications for the technology include developing innovative ways to produce energy, creating novel sensors to monitor the environment or building bacterial factories to churn out medicines. The next challenge will be working out how to build genetic circuits — artificial sequences of genes that interact with each other in complex patterns to produce desired traits. So far, researchers can reliably design gene circuits about 15,000–25,000 base-pairs long, a sequence that contains about six to ten gene promoters. Anything larger, Weiss says, and "nobody right now will be able to give you a design that works". It's difficult to define an interesting property controlled by a larger number of genes, and combining those genes into a single network is harder still. "Getting new genes to work together is actually a major challenge," he says.

Weiss says he is convinced that the field will ultimately get there, but not everyone believes that embedding these circuits in an artificial genome will prove more effective than simply modifying natural genomes. Geneticist George Church of Harvard University in Boston agrees. "I think the jury is still out whether for synthetic biology you want to synthesize whole genomes or just synthesize the parts you want to change," he says.

nature

[Carlhole]

Agreed, simply more technocopian claptrap put out to the masses to maintain the illusion of belief and hope in a bright cornucopian future.

I mean, honestly, how does any thinking person actually believe that a system/industry centered around oil producing algae will ever be able to capture enough CO2 from the atmosphere in to make a difference in continuing BAU?

Or that they will significantly improve on oil consuming bacteria that have evolved to utilize oil as an energy source over a couple of hundred million years?

The article had to do with a milestone achievement in producing a synthetic bacterial genome. It listed potential applications, including energy production, medicines and other sorts of manufacturing. Nowhere was any "cornucopian" energy promise made. This is something you have pulled out of your butt.

[jbrovont]

So many amazingly beneficial things are probably possible using this type of technology, but...

"It's ALIVE!" Yes, quietly buried in the back pages, man has created life. A living, reproducing organism.

If we weren't already in line to be wiped out by other things, I would be really worried.

As it is, self-replicating armageddon will have to take a back seat.

[Homesteader]

including energy production, medicines and other sorts of manufacturing. Nowhere was any "cornucopian" energy promise made. This is something you have pulled out of your butt.

Huh?

[Tanada]

Something nobody has mentioned yet is using this technology to alter complex life forms. One of the early uses I can foresee is to use this technology to rewrite the sequence for Mitochondrial DNA. In fish, amphibians, reptiles and birds the Mitochondria create less free radicals than they do in mammals and this leads to a slow or very slow aging process for many species that are not on the mammalian branch. For example if you take a Parrot and a Rat and you compare their aging rates the Parrot lives more than 20 times as long. Sparrows and Canaries live over 20 years, mice rarely live to be 2. Even the humble Ostrich, which weighs in about the same as a large dog, lives to be 50 years old while few dogs make it much past 15.

Now picture a world where the mDNA of white lab mice has been rewritten to resemble that of a Canary, then a few years later you can buy a pet Cat or Dog with a natural life span of 50 years because they have Pseudo-Ostrich mDNA and it breeds true in the female lines. How long after that before the Elites are bearing children who will have a natural life span of 350-700 years? Such mDNA modified beings will mature normally but after reaching adulthood their aging process will slow to a tenth of yours and mine. Unless something kicks in soon to crash our civilization we will become a world of the seemingly eternal Elites and the Plebes who serve them and die early.

[EnergyUnlimited]

Tanada,
Surely that is a possibility, however it remains to be seen, would such modified mitochondria be reconcilable with functions of mammalian cell.
In any case human life span is already rather long (comparable to birds with supposedly better mitochondria) and free radical damage is not the only factor responsible for aging of human cells.
What about telomer loss for example?
And try to fiddle with telomerase too much and cancers will result.

[Tanada]

Tanada,
Surely that is a possibility, however it remains to be seen, would such modified mitochondria be reconcilable with functions of mammalian cell.
In any case human life span is already rather long (comparable to birds with supposedly better mitochondria) and free radical damage is not the only factor responsible for aging of human cells.
What about telomer loss for example?
And try to fiddle with telomerase too much and cancers will result.

Certainly, though I can't find the link I know I have read articles on cross species mDNA transfer. The issue came up due to cloning research, if you use for example a cow ovum for a sheep clone the sheep clone has the cow mother's mDNA in all of its cells instead of the donor sheep's mDNA. It has been suggested that R&D should be done to see just how far the cross compatibility extends. For example if you could use unfertilized fish eggs as donor ova you could manipulate them much more easily than mammalian donor eggs due to their larger size. This raised the issue of what effect fish mDNA would have on mammalian clone development.

My post was in reference to the fact that an mDNA strand is much simpler than many bacteria DNA sequences, though I do not know the specifics of the edited synthetic cell referred too in the experiment that started this thread. It stands to reason that if this technology could be used to create synthetic mDNA strands that resemble those in longer lived life forms but which are compatible to mammals it will be done, sooner or later.

What ultimate life expectancy could result? I do not know, and I doubt anyone else does either, however it is contended that free radicals produced by mDNA contribute to the aging process. Logic dictates that removing this source of free radicals would have a slowing effect on the aging process. See http://www.circuitblue.com/biogerontology/mito.shtml for some suggestions of how it might work.

[Carlhole]

including energy production, medicines and other sorts of manufacturing. Nowhere was any "cornucopian" energy promise made. This is something you have pulled out of your butt.

Huh?

It doesn't take a genius to figure it out the meaning of this easy-to-understand article.

Potential applications of synthetic life include energy production but no one knows what the proportions of this particular application will amount to because it hasn't been explored or engineered yet! No one knows what the ultimate potential of this technology is because this technology is incipient and not in the least mature.

If, a decade or two from now, it proves out that synthetic biologically-derived nano-machines are able to produce some fraction of aggregate energy demand, then they will be used for that purpose among their many other uses. What is so difficult to grasp here?

[EnergyUnlimited]

This raised the issue of what effect fish mDNA would have on mammalian clone development.

I do not expect compatibility of mitochondria of cold blooded animals with cells of warm blooded animals.
They are simply too "lazy" for the task.
So swapping between birds and mammals is probably as far as we can try to go.

It stands to reason that if this technology could be used to create synthetic mDNA strands that resemble those in longer lived life forms but which are compatible to mammals it will be done, sooner or later.

Why not to swap certain sequences of mDNA between species?
There is no practical need for synthetic approach if you can extract certain parts of mDNA from donor species and insert it precisely where they should go by already known genetic technology.

What ultimate life expectancy could result? I do not know, and I doubt anyone else does either, however it is contended that free radicals produced by mDNA contribute to the aging process.

I do not contest it.
However free radicals are only a part of story.

If, a decade or two from now, it proves out that synthetic biologically-derived nano-machines are able to produce some fraction of aggregate energy demand, then they will be used for that purpose among their many other uses. What is so difficult to grasp here?

Until we can make yet unknown genes capable of production of entirely new proteins of useful properties yet unknown for Nature, chances of success of such undertaking are nil.
Why?
Because genes of your synthetic organisms will only be replicas of natural genes, so they are not going to perform anything materially new or unknown.
It will be only further fine tuning of processes which are already extremely fine tuned.
Not much scope for improvement.

[Homesteader]

Well. . . .if science won't back up these wild-ass claims then by god lets use . . . hmmmm, what will we use?

Ah ha!!! Magic, yeah, thats it. . . magic!!

Science is basically learning how nature works. Most people aren't aware of that simple fact.