On Fri, 22 Oct 1999, Skye Howard wrote:
> what about engineering some of those artificial chromosomes
Unless you put the AC into the germ line cells it will
not be inherited. However doing this is what Greg Stock
and John Campbell are proposing. (By puting an AC
into the first cell of an embryo, it will be inherited by the
germline cells as the fetus develops.
As far as ACs creating hard nanotech structures it is
doable. Think, teeth & bones & sea shells. However
since these are patterned on the scale of eukaryotic
cells (10 micron scale) and the smallest we could probably go
is bacteria (1 micron scale), it is doubtful you could
get a cell to make a nanoassembler without a *lot* of
work designing new genes that would self-assemble into
an assembler.
> I mean, for example, you could enter the
This is similar to what I have proposed in my NanoParts@Home
scheme. If you have a description for something and a
> to create artificial structures- for example, an implant
> of some kind that would be inherited.
> specifications into a computer as the "desired output"
> and then running it through one of those genetic
> algorhythm programs. What better application for
> genetic algorhythm programming than genetic
> engineering?
> A) Genetic engineering of mechanical devices (possible
> jumps on nannotech using cell replication methods?)
> (inheritable implants?)
Almost everything going on inside cells involves "mechanical" devices at the molecular scale. The reason enzymes work is that they position molecules in close mechanical proximity and apply directed energy (chemical or mechanical) to drive reactions forward much faster than they would normally occur.
Cells do 1-3 with wet nanotech. What nanotechnology is all
about is doing 1-4 with dry/hard nanomaterials meaning you have
to solve 1 & 2 with an entirely new toolset and assembly
process. We are trying to compress what nature took a
few billion years or so develop into a couple of decades.
It worth noting that *most* of the economic benefits
attributed to nanotechnology can be obtained by mastering
(3) and perhaps (2). The degree to which (4) is required
for this is open to discussion. Having (1) with hard nanotech
materials is only the frosting on the cake.
> b)applications of genetic algorhythm programming to
> genetic engineering.
This is already done without the "programming". There are routine experiments that are done in biotech labs where they "evolve" better enzymes or tools for specific purposes. It simply involves methods to create millions or billions of variants and then selecting the best of the bunch, mutating those and repeating. Generally it is called "directed evolution" or something similar and you can probably find dozens of articles on it in Medline.