As¬†a computer programmer and all-around science geek, this tremendously interests me. I’ve heard about this whole notion of programming bacteria, and the concept definitely intrigued me. In a TED talk I saw by Craig Vetner, I first began to imagine what we could accomplish by doing this. I shared it with friends, almost all of whom said “OMG WHAT IF TEH BACTERIAS MUTATE AN KILL US ALL”, which made me giggle. All technologies have their potential risks, and hopefully the people working with them understand and plan for those risks. But if they don’t, then that’s why we take the time to understand what we’re working with before we release it into the world. Duh.
Well, today on Science Daily, there was a really interesting articleabout some research being done in this area. Essentially, they are finding that things are not quite as easy as we had originally assumed them to be. E. coli cells that the researchers were working with demonstrated a bistability similar to the concept of a toggle switch in electrical engineering. Depending on the state of the bacteria, some would react in one fashion and others in another.
Now, that’s not a huge deal-breaker at all. It just means we need to broaden our understanding of the way in which we program life. What’s nice about it is that the bistability is something that can actually be accounted for in computer simulations and easily predicted.
See people? They didn’t just invent an e. coli supermonster that would cause us all to die brutal deaths, they did the preliminary work to get a better understanding of what we are dealing with. But this work is truly revolutionary in terms of application.
I just have to say, every day I read various blogs and science magazines, and there is so much amazing work happening out there. It truly astonishes me, and that’s why I am involved in this blog. I hope that some of you see some of this stuff and react the same as I do, with jaw-dropping wonder at the complexities of life, the intricacies we are unravelling, and the myriad of questions still ahead of us. It’s a pretty amazing time to be alive.
Jim
