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Mars 24, 2008
It's life, Sir, but not as we know it....
Uhyre interessant foredrag av Craig Venter om syntetiske gener fra TED (mine notater "after the jump"):
...og like interessant er Steven Shapin's anmeldelse av Venters selvbiografi, som virker litt "miffed" over at Venters måte å forske på - med profitt for øye og store investeringer, og han tydeligvis ikke passer inn i den tradisjonelle forestillingen om en vitenskapsmann som en som holder på med sitt og er lykkelig med det. Craig Venter påståes å være aggressiv, arrogant og en tøff konkurrent. Og hva er problemet med det?
Via den uhyre produktive Paul Kedrosky.
- from reading the life's code to writing it
- speed of sequencing genomes incredibly fast: will do 130 as a side project next year
- expedition collecting seawater, filter it for organism, sequence what you find
- 1.3b new genes and 50K new species in one barrel of seawater
- also looking at microbes breathed in on a daily basis
- findings: Biodiversity in each region is amazing - some of it due to temperature
- photoreceptors vary by region as well
- of the 29m genes in animals, we have only 24000 so far
- synthetic genomics: Can we construct genes from scratch. Getting rapid and cheap, have to find out what is essential
- started with transposon mutagenesis, changing things around
- relatively few genes common to mechanisms
- managed to create a synthetic virus from 5000 pairs
- "software building its own hardware"
- safety: Smallpox, for instance, cannot be made infectious
- but single-cells can be made within two years, and cariotics within 10 years
- D. radiodurans: Microbes that rebuild themselves after massive doses of radiation
- synthetic cells have tremenduous potential, such as capturing CO2
- Dupont and Statoil have programs to metabolize methane
- could replace the oil industry itself
- ethicals and policy studies, delayed experiments on artificial mechanism:
- religious leaders could find no objection, what remained was concerns about biological warfare
Skrevet av Espen den Mars 24, 2008 01:56 EM
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