Nothing wrong with synthetic biology, It's just B-I-O-L-O-G-Y and the rest is silence
Nothing to do with their hearts
Nothing to do with their heads
Nothing to do with their homes
Nothing to do with their bedsIt’s just B-I-O-L-O-G-Y
Can’t you see
It’s just Biology
Biology – coming in between you and me
I guess that was the same reaction from Christina Agapakis, “There’s a lot of biology that gets in the way of the engineering”, well I could not agree more. Most of our current understanding and knowledge about the biological systems generally fall short when it comes to manipulate them in the same way as engineers does with transistors and switches to create circuits such as radio. Unfortunately biological systems are more complicated than one can think, even a fully functional single cell can be more complex than Boeing 747. As Martin Fussenegger suggests “This is the type of complexity that is very difficult to capture by standardized characterization”. Terms such as circuitry, modularity, redundancy and robustness which are also used to describe engineered systems like cars, electronics, robots and airplanes are now adopted to understand and manipulate the complexity of living systems as well. But biological systems are not like plug n play devices so they don’t work the way we engineers expect because there are several reason and Roberta review captures five key challenges
- Many of the parts are undefined (and mechanism also)
- The circuitry is unpredictable
- The complexity is unwieldy
- Many parts are incompatible
- Variability crashes the system
Apart from that biological system have the gestalt property of a whole and it cannot be described merely as a sum of its parts which leads us to another important conclusion that digital systems anology may not work unless we have holistic view of the system. Now scientist have realized these limitations and to overcome this they are looking towards the alternative pathways where they can exploit best of both, biological and digital systems. One option could be creating orthogonal or parallel circuitry without touching the natural machinery of the cell, alternatively physically isolation of the synthetic network from the rest of the cell could be a possible solution.
Reference:
Kwok, R. (2010). Five hard truths for synthetic biology Nature, 463 (7279), 288-290 DOI: 10.1038/463288a
13 Responses to “Nothing wrong with synthetic biology, It's just B-I-O-L-O-G-Y and the rest is silence”
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Hello OzFebruary 11, 2012 at 5:56 pm -
Good move by Elsevier, but company need more than PR efforts to save it's ground. Why so afraid accepting the new reality, open is future.February 11, 2012 at 3:01 am
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Dear Entrepreneur, CXO of unknown start-up with uncertain business model, be grounded and humble. cheersFebruary 10, 2012 at 2:53 am
«…unless we have holistic view of the system»
What I love this conclusion!
IMHO, the circuit concept is pregnant of the time dimension, but time is a variable largely neglected in most of the studies I read.
Anyone thought of adapting our own engineering processes and expectations?
Processes:
The answer is in genetic algorithms that will produce subsystems adapted to all that complexity. Provided we design the training and selection process intelligently, our engineered subsystems will achieve the desired task, without us ever needing to know how they do it.
Expectations:
We should NOT expect a designed biological subsystem to exhibit the same behavior every single time. Expect variability. Count on it. Learn to depend on it. This way, the emergent solutions will eventually solve our problem much more efficiently than we could ever do on our own.
Thats very true, may be next generation techniques such as live cell imagining will help to overcome that limitation, thats what systems biology is supposed to do.
As matter of fact genetic algorithm is bioinspired, also biological systems are not just about mutations there are emergent behavior and several other factors which may be very much chaotic at the end.
Nothing wrong with synthetic biology, It's just B-I-O-L-O-G-Y and the rest is silence http://bit.ly/8poTs4
Nothing wrong with synthetic biology, It's just B-I-O-L-O-G-Y and the rest is silence http://bit.ly/8poTs4
Nothing wrong with synthetic biology, It's just B-I-O-L-O-G-Y and the rest is silence http://goo.gl/fb/CFWG
This is my point, isn’t it? We need to embrace chaos and find ways to create useful attractors. Chaos is vital to the emergence of complexity.
Interesting read. http://bit.ly/4R90kk "Nothing's wrong with synthetic biology, It's just B-I-O-L-O-G-Y and the rest is silence"
RT @bookhling: Intrsting read http://bit.ly/4R90kk "Nothing's wrong with synthetic biology, It's just B-I-O-L-O-G-Y and the rest is silence"
RT @bookhling:Interesting read. http://bit.ly/4R90kk Nothing's wrong with synthetic biology, It's just B-I-O-L-O-G-Y and the rest is silence
Exactly, but not sure if GA is part of solution or the problem
cool initiative, thanks!
This comment was originally posted on Fisheye Perspective