Synthetic Life

By John Markoff

There is a growing consensus (at least in Silicon Valley) that the information age is about to give way to the era of synthetic genetics. That was underscored recently when Harvard geneticist George Church and J. Craig Venter — of the race to decode the human genome fame — gave lectures before a small group of scientists, technologists, entrepreneurs, and writers in West Hollywood.

The event, billed as “A Short Course on Synthetic Genomics,” was organized by John Brockman, the literary impresario (and book agent for several New York Times reporters, including this one) who publishes the cybersalon-style website www.edge.org, a forum dedicated to scientists (many of whom are his clients) and their ideas.

In roughly six hours of lectures, both scientists tried to convey how the world will be changed by the ability to routinely read genetic sequences into computing systems and then store, replicate, alter and insert them back into living cells.

The rate at which this technology is now improving puts silicon to shame. Dr. Church noted that between 1970 and 2005 gene sequencing had taken place on a Moore’s Law pace, improving at about 1.5 times per year. Since then it has improved at the rate of an order of magnitude, or ten times annually.

In the process the cost of sequencing the human genome has plunged from $3 billion to $5 thousand and continues to fall. Dr. Church identified 17 companies and one “open source” project all pursuing different technologies to further push down cost and speed up the pace of sequencing.

As a consequence, the structure of the emerging synthetic genetics industry is beginning to mirror that of the semiconductor and computer industries, which are based on modular components and design tools.

The key to the vast growth of the computer industry took place during the 1970s when physicist Carver Mead helped give the industry a standard design approach based on modular components. Now that appears to be happening in the synthetic biology world as well.

For someone who has spent the past three decades writing about computing, Dr. Venter’s talk was eye-opening.

“I view DNA as an analog information system,” he said. “ and I hope to convince you in fact that it is absolutely the software of life.”

Comments are no longer being accepted.

babafisa August 3, 2009 · 11:12 am

Great article . Will definitely apply it to my site

Mitch August 3, 2009 · 2:26 pm

The Army is going to get ahold of this.

George Lovely August 3, 2009 · 3:20 pm

Alas, this information’s downside, its misuse by police, insurance companies, racist groups, and who knows who else, likely outweigh any potential benefits for all but the few able to afford the medical ‘miracles’ it may produce.

clairet August 3, 2009 · 3:29 pm

Yikes. And, cool! The news in this article, and other recent articles on artificial intelligence, scare the bejeepers out of a layperson like me. Where is this all going?

John August 3, 2009 · 3:33 pm

Of what, Mitch? Gene sequencing software? The ability to genetically modify organisms? For one, I’m sure plenty of military labs have had this capacity for many, many years. Secondly it isn’t even particularly villainous. I’m not sure why everybody is so paranoid about everything.

BenK August 3, 2009 · 3:34 pm

It already has, thank goodness. This will help heal the wounded.

Tom Folkes August 3, 2009 · 3:36 pm

Dear Virgina,
the Army already has.

CB August 3, 2009 · 3:54 pm

Hmmm, if DNA is the software of Life – who/what is the programmer? I love science!

Matt McKinley August 3, 2009 · 3:56 pm

Like any new technology, there are cases that can be made for and against it. In this case, the potential for good here is incredible. The test will come when the commercial and informational potential is realized. Given the abysmal track record of humanity with a new technology, it’s a safe bet that the negative side of this will arise.

Kit Wilkinson August 3, 2009 · 4:02 pm

Too complicated! Sure, the alphabet of genetics has been decoded and simple words have been compiled into amino acids. But, can a “Shakespear” of genetic words write the “Great Play of Life”? I doubt it. Do not worry my fellow friends, for a single bacteria is more complicated than any machine we have produced yet. And “fixing” an organism as complicated as ourselves is centuries in the future. Leave those fears to the SciFi Channel.

Kit Wilkinson August 3, 2009 · 4:04 pm

I mispelled “Shakespeare”. Sorry folks.

Davd Bott August 3, 2009 · 4:07 pm

So what is the test of this idea (per the column’s header)? I’m confused.

But to respond to the article: When an undergraduate student 5 years ago was using genetic techniques to make plants glow in UV light for her senior project, and I realized that I had learned about the mere possibility of these techniques 20 years ago as biology undergraduate via photocopies of pre-prints (because nothing had been published), I knew this kind of knowledge growth was happening.

I feel like someone who learned about flight mechanics in the Wright’s bicycle shed and then 20 years later was seeing air mail planes and barnstormers. Imagining what might be in my lifetime is thrilling . What is frightening is to think how much development in aviation was fueled by world war. Will the same be true in this case?

Science fiction writers have been struggling with these questions in novel form for the past 10-20 years. Why are the newspapers taking so long to address them? Can any investigative reporting system keep up with advances? What are the implications for public policy? For our future?

DH August 3, 2009 · 4:25 pm

When some disgruntled graduate student creates a wind-blown corn blight in his basement and plunges the world’s population into starvation, then we’ll all find out just how beneficial genetic tinkering can be.

Oden August 3, 2009 · 4:39 pm

The upside of this is that, even though the potential for abuse will almost certainly be realized, we’ll eventually figure out how to engineer human behavior and intellect through genetics and neuromimetic devices and hopefully give rise to a race of less dumb, less shallow, less greedy, less irrational people.

I’m all for Earth being populated entirely by Roy Battys.

bb August 3, 2009 · 4:47 pm

I’ve seen the future and you and I have no place in it.

Oden August 3, 2009 · 4:50 pm

‘Too complicated! Sure, the alphabet of genetics has been decoded and simple words have been compiled into amino acids. But, can a “Shakespear” of genetic words write the “Great Play of Life”? I doubt it.’

This is an argument from incredulity…

‘Do not worry my fellow friends, for a single bacteria is more complicated than any machine we have produced yet. And “fixing” an organism as complicated as ourselves is centuries in the future. Leave those fears to the SciFi Channel.’

How do you measure “complicated”?

If we use genome size, bacteria aren’t that complicated. Mycoplasma genitalium, for example, is at the low end, with a genome about 580 kb in size. Everything that it does could easily be described on an old floppy disk with plenty room to spare. Other bacteria have larger genomes, but I don’t think any of them (or at least not MANY of them) exceed 2MB.

If you are talking about how much intricate machinery can be packed into a single cell, no we’re not there yet but we’re getting there quickly.

‘And “fixing” an organism as complicated as ourselves is centuries in the future. Leave those fears to the SciFi Channel.’

People have “fixed themselves” since the dawn of medicine. What on Earth can you mean?

Spencer Ericksen August 3, 2009 · 5:01 pm

I think Dr. Venter means “digital” and not “analog.” The information is digitized in four bit code: ATCG. The output (replicate or transcript) is not dependent on the scale of the input (DNA code), just whether the input is read or not (DNA reading machines).

Windsor Smith August 3, 2009 · 5:25 pm

CB (#7): Up to now, DNA’s “programmer” has been natural (or, more recently, artificial) selection. But that approach has at least two shortcomings in humans: it’s slow, and it requires removing unfit individuals from the gene pool.

Without some genetic engineering, advances in medical science will continue to allow the human gene pool to drift toward ever more pathological and maladaptive traits, ultimately increasing the time and resources we must spend on corrective medical procedures. It’s time for us to end that cycle and take control of our genetic destiny.

Josh Hill August 3, 2009 · 5:44 pm

The potential benefits are unlimited. Unfortunately, the potential pitfalls are as well. It is hard to see how we will survive a technology that will in the not-to-distant future make it possible for a single lunatic to destroy the human race.

John August 3, 2009 · 6:00 pm

Just like computer hackers can write viruses that infect only certain operating systems, some genome hacker will be able to modify smallpox to affect people with certain racial markers.

At the same time, doctors will be able to customize medical treatments and bring enormous benefits to vast swaths of humanity.

Like all technologies, synthetic genomes hold no intrinsic morality. American society is not ready for this debate. Our science education is too poor, our politics too polarized, and our technology advancing too quickly for that.

Who will drive this discussion? Not politicians. Certainly not the infotainment media. We have a dearth of public figures informed and capable enough to do so.

Oden August 3, 2009 · 6:01 pm

That confused me too. Base pairs definitely aren’t real-valued. The question of course is whether A-T pairs are zeros and C-G pairs ones or vice versa. :)

johnny August 3, 2009 · 6:02 pm

Finally, P&G will be able to market Soylent Pringles

Stefan August 3, 2009 · 6:08 pm

We’ll surely enter the era of synthetic genomics. That is of course, if we don’t enter the era of global warming harming humanity, or the era of gloabl financial ruin, first.

Neil Kuchinsky August 3, 2009 · 6:12 pm

There are some things we should not pluck from the Tree of Knowledge. Do any of these scientists notice that the closer we get to the ultimate secrets of our Creator – whether in nuclear or genetic matters – the closer we are to enabling our own destruction?

Regretably (and fatally), scientific egos, financial greed, the will to power and the desire to control are forces too powerful to permit limits to be placed on such God-like knowledge. Such forbidden fruit will invariably be accessable to greater numbers of evil people who, by individual initiative, will be able to inflict enormous chaos and destruction upon humanity. What was God thinking when he gave us free choice?

Christopher Dow August 3, 2009 · 6:42 pm

They’re paranoid, John, because practically every single significant invention or discovery that science has made, from the taming of fire to the discovery of hunting technology to splitting of the atom to this latest in information technology, has been used as a tool to coalesce power in the hands of a few. These few then proceed to use these tools to indenture those who are weaker than they and kill or imprison those who disagree with their tenets, which usually also work to brainwash the people through socio-cultural constructs like religion and professional sports. The difficulty with many of the discoveries made during the latter half of the 20th century is that they enable brainwashing on a mass scale. And with a little genetic manipulation, perhaps even that won’t be necessary when we breed out individuality and breed in subservience.