When biotech comes home

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not so huge a gap...: >As a biotech consultant and analyst, I have to >say that I consider the Dyson's prognostications >about as substantial as nanotech gray goo or >self-replicating nanorobots.

Well nanotech is way out there...but biotech is very nearby...only the process of various techniques need to be refined to make the Dysons' predictions come true. Stable ways to handle molocules, build DNA from base nucleotides and deliver DNA into cells are needed. Beyond that the problem of mapping proteins to organism function is the real headache..but it is really just a bookkeeping problem and we have increasingly more powerful computers to make that less of an issue as time goes by. The rapid development of optical and quantum computation will complement and augment advances in biotech from the realm of just turning genes on and off to building organisms from the ground up. If you analyse biotech in a vacuum it does appear to be far from "make your own monster" kits, but it is not in a vacuum.

>There is a huge gap between the current state of the biotech art and the sorts of God-play projects they envision.

Not really, already such "God play" has given us clones, genetically engineered fruit and vegetables. And in the last 5 years complete annotation of the book of man in the form of the human genome. Add to that the mouse, fly and the C. Elegans genomes (work on the rat genome is in progress) and we have the foundation for doing exactly what the Dyson's are predicting. All you need to do is understand a bit about how transcription and protein synthesis work to be able to make extended predictions beyond what has already been done.

>I think physics and computer techies live and >think in virtual realms, while biotechies must >deal with actual material meat and molecules.

And thank God for that, were it not for Newton's realm of thought to describe the motion of the planets he would not have invented Calculus..which is the foundation of *all* modern human technology. From electronics to radar, hydraulics to ...biotech! Calculus is a key tool.

Had not James Clerk Maxwell saught to find the relationship between electricity and magnetism and using Newton's calculus defined a small set of equations that went on to be the foundation of all modern day electronics circuit design, we'd probably be tapping morse instead of a keyboard right now.

I can go on, what if Jean Baptiste Fourier had not investigated the esoteric idea of a mathematical transform? Or if The Marquise de Laplace had not done the same? What if Shockley and Bardene didn't try to find a more efficient amplifier than a bulky vacuum tube?

>There may well be a rather large gap between the >two worlds.

I think the size of the gap is determined by how isolated the technology is from other technologies. Biotech today owes many of it's advances to improved techniques in other technologies, computer processing power being the largest and most obvious area. It's this marriage to an existing rapidly developing technology that will ensure that the prognostications envisioned by the Dysons' come to fruition much sooner than you think.; Posted by: sent2null Posted on: 08/01/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use