Comment speaking of me (company co-founder) (Score 1) 208
Four quick comments:
(1) I don't think that we really know how to engineer biology yet. Progress at the moment is taking the form of adapting (stealing?) past lessons from other engineering disciplines, from when they got started back in the "good old days," and seeing if they are worth a damn in biology. Ideas like (i) standardization, (ii) abstraction, and (iii) decoupling. We've got a lot of work to do. Help. Check out the Registry of Standard Biological Parts as one place to get started.
(2) I'm really freaked out by the idea that we might see a "microsoft equivalent" developing in biological engineering. Imagine if our wheat in the year 2050 is running the equivalent of Windows95. That seems like a "bad idea." Please see comment (4) below.
(3) I'm also concerned by the possible, future mis-application of biological technology. But, I think that the only way to deal with this problem is to (i) expect that it will, at some point in time, happen, and (ii) make sure that there are many, many, many more people who understand what is going on and who can work together to fix the problems. Mitigation of future biological risk feels like solving problems related to the security of an open distributed network. Imagine if I told you that nobody was going to write computer viruses and not to worry about network security. The same thing is going to become true in biology, we just have to make sure that the numbers of folks who are disposed to cause harm are very small relative to the numbers of folks who are empowered and want to be constructive. See this PDF for more thoughts on this topic (apologies if it seems a bit abstract).
(4) We (some folks at MIT and all over) are starting a not-for-profit called the BioBricks Foundation (BBF) to help promote the development of open biotechnology. Here's the current plan (very early). Please help if you want (or by a T-shirt when they are ready)! I'm donating all stock/income that I might receive from working with Codon to the BBF.
Thanks/take it easy!
Drew
(1) I don't think that we really know how to engineer biology yet. Progress at the moment is taking the form of adapting (stealing?) past lessons from other engineering disciplines, from when they got started back in the "good old days," and seeing if they are worth a damn in biology. Ideas like (i) standardization, (ii) abstraction, and (iii) decoupling. We've got a lot of work to do. Help. Check out the Registry of Standard Biological Parts as one place to get started.
(2) I'm really freaked out by the idea that we might see a "microsoft equivalent" developing in biological engineering. Imagine if our wheat in the year 2050 is running the equivalent of Windows95. That seems like a "bad idea." Please see comment (4) below.
(3) I'm also concerned by the possible, future mis-application of biological technology. But, I think that the only way to deal with this problem is to (i) expect that it will, at some point in time, happen, and (ii) make sure that there are many, many, many more people who understand what is going on and who can work together to fix the problems. Mitigation of future biological risk feels like solving problems related to the security of an open distributed network. Imagine if I told you that nobody was going to write computer viruses and not to worry about network security. The same thing is going to become true in biology, we just have to make sure that the numbers of folks who are disposed to cause harm are very small relative to the numbers of folks who are empowered and want to be constructive. See this PDF for more thoughts on this topic (apologies if it seems a bit abstract).
(4) We (some folks at MIT and all over) are starting a not-for-profit called the BioBricks Foundation (BBF) to help promote the development of open biotechnology. Here's the current plan (very early). Please help if you want (or by a T-shirt when they are ready)! I'm donating all stock/income that I might receive from working with Codon to the BBF.
Thanks/take it easy!
Drew
