The Evolution Machine: Directed Catalized Evolution

Since now, genetic manipulation was done in a rather "artisan-like" way, thus, making it a slow. manual, trial and error process.
What George Church, a geneticist at Boston's Harvard Medical School has done is to go all Ford on this.
His team has created a machine that can expose cells to specific sets of DNA strands containing specific instructions (mostly about protein production) and, by a process described in the article, they can make many many variations in the recombination of those strands in the cell's DNA and let evolution (steroid-pumped evolution) come up with the best result that contains the desired traits.
Amazing. Scary. Beautifully elegant.
But, what could possibly go wrong?

Evolution machine: Genetic engineering on fast forward
Automated genetic tinkering is just the start – this machine could be used to rewrite the language of life and create new species of humans

READ the article at NewScientist
It WILL blow your freaking mind...

Peace

Drakus.

reply to post by drakus



I can has death-ray vision?


no seriously.. we're on the verge of seeing super heroes battle super villians...

no joke.

...

reply to post by drakus


From the article you quote
"The machine let the E. coli multiply, mixed them with the DNA strands, and applied an electric shock to open up the bacterial cells"
Surely Mary Selley will be spinning in her grave.

I can has death-ray vision?

Probably
Even though is scares the begeeezus out of me the thought of this technology being in the hands that TODAY hold the powers of this world, I can't deny that THIS is where I want to go, as human, I think we are entering a stage of evolution in which our concioussness (our thinking feeling stuff) has a DIRECT influence on our evolution.
And yes, I'm a geek who wants, at least, to be near-inmortal, to be able to SEE and Experience things that take looong time for a "common" human...
But X-rays would be cool also..

Originally posted by goldentorch
reply to post by drakus

 

From the article you quote
"The machine let the E. coli multiply, mixed them with the DNA strands, and applied an electric shock to open up the bacterial cells"
Surely Mary Selley will be spinning in her grave.

edit on 3/7/11 by goldentorch because: (no reason given)

I had the same thought.
It's eerily cool, isn't it?

Let's ruin nature some more shall we ?

I can easily see this used for bad stuff rather than good.
For example:
"We can remove the need for sleep."
random worker: Yay no more sleeping. Parties all night long!
Boss: Hey you no longer need rest, now you can work 24 hours a day, 5days a week.

Or just create some kind of super soldier that doesn't feel pain or has feeling.

That is of course, if all the manipulation doesn't ruin a "human" to the point of only living for 10 years max.

Or do we change aging so we live up to 200 years without problems... other than even more overpopulation maybe.

While I find the idea of the 'perfect' 'human' interesting, It'd rather have nature (or whatever it is) decide.

Originally posted by drakus

Originally posted by goldentorch
reply to post by drakus

 

From the article you quote
"The machine let the E. coli multiply, mixed them with the DNA strands, and applied an electric shock to open up the bacterial cells"
Surely Mary Selley will be spinning in her grave.

edit on 3/7/11 by goldentorch because: (no reason given)

I had the same thought.
It's eerily cool, isn't it?

Trouble is they want us all to be like those a hats, you can bet they won't pick anything decent to clone us into. Another Turner or Bach perhaps.....agh nah....i fancy Ghengis Khan this time that'll show the mofo's

Already been posted. www.abovetopsecret.com... -
Well a similar post!



Jamie.

reply to post by drakus


WoW

Fascinating and terrifying in equal measure.

(Doublepost)

Interesting. The most interesting thing will be that, after they completely master the genetic code, they will finally have to admit that no amount of changes can turn E.Colli into anything other than another strand of E.Colli.

Uh-oh.

Originally posted by LanceDH
Let's ruin nature some more shall we ?

I can easily see this used for bad stuff rather than good.
For example:
"We can remove the need for sleep."
random worker: Yay no more sleeping. Parties all night long!
Boss: Hey you no longer need rest, now you can work 24 hours a day, 5days a week.

Or just create some kind of super soldier that doesn't feel pain or has feeling.

That is of course, if all the manipulation doesn't ruin a "human" to the point of only living for 10 years max.

Or do we change aging so we live up to 200 years without problems... other than even more overpopulation maybe.

While I find the idea of the 'perfect' 'human' interesting, It'd rather have nature (or whatever it is) decide.

you could say that science is human nature. so tampering with our genetics is completely natural.
just a thought that i didnt put much effort in to.

Originally posted by vjr1113

Originally posted by LanceDH
Let's ruin nature some more shall we ?

I can easily see this used for bad stuff rather than good.
For example:
"We can remove the need for sleep."
random worker: Yay no more sleeping. Parties all night long!
Boss: Hey you no longer need rest, now you can work 24 hours a day, 5days a week.

Or just create some kind of super soldier that doesn't feel pain or has feeling.

That is of course, if all the manipulation doesn't ruin a "human" to the point of only living for 10 years max.

Or do we change aging so we live up to 200 years without problems... other than even more overpopulation maybe.

While I find the idea of the 'perfect' 'human' interesting, It'd rather have nature (or whatever it is) decide.

you could say that science is human nature. so tampering with our genetics is completely natural.
just a thought that i didnt put much effort in to.

I completely agree, this is not more unnatural than a bird building a nest, it's just a "subset" of cosmos, doing "it's thing"...

Originally posted by vjr1113

Originally posted by LanceDH
Let's ruin nature some more shall we? I can easily see this used for bad stuff rather than good. For example:

"We can remove the need for sleep."

random worker: Yay no more sleeping. Parties all night long!

Boss: Hey you no longer need rest, now you can work 24 hours a day, 5 days a week,,.

It'd rather have nature (or whatever it is) decide.

you could say that science is human nature. so tampering with our genetics is completely natural.
just a thought that i didnt put much effort in to.

You're right, but so is LanceDH. Note that he’s thinking a bit more deeply than the average technophobe. This development, if it pans out, will change the world, and some of those changes aren’t going to be nice.

I am a technophile. I approve of advances in science and technology. They excite me and fire my imagination. But I also look around at the world we have made for ourselves, and I see that human nature never changes. The more powerful our science and technology make us, the more urgently the problems of our human nature press upon us.

I don’t know what the answer is. I believe Nature will provide it for herself, sooner or later.