Friday, October 02, 2009

A Life of Its Own - Where will synthetic biology lead us?

Another excellent article I recently read in The New Yorker here. Just a snippet:

“We are going to start doing the same thing that we do with our pets, with bacteria,” the genomic futurist Juan Enriquez has said, describing our transition from a world that relied on machines to one that relies on biology. “A house pet is a domesticated parasite,” he noted. “ It is evolved to have an interaction with human beings. Same thing with corn”—a crop that didn’t exist until we created it. “Same thing is going to start happening with energy,” he went on. “We are going to start domesticating bacteria to process stuff inside enclosed reactors to produce energy in a far more clean and efficient manner. This is just the beginning stage of being able to program life.”

By the way, my domesticated parasite Lucky was back acting normal today. I don't know what was wrong with him yesterday.

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