3D printing is getting even more cosy with biology, people !
source: ME Minie, Samudrala R (2013) The Promise and Challenge of Digital Biology. J Bioeng Biomed Sci 3: e118. doi: 10.4172/2155-9538.1000e118
I get to cite an actual published article, for once !
You might have heard about Bioprinting, the act of printing biological material (mostly cells printed in layers around a scaffold).
They're mainly used to create organs from pre-existing tissue grown in a lab, which needs to be cultivated first.
Then there's DNA Synthesis, replicating DNA strands from scratch
source: Wikimedia
This is a Bioprinter. It uses a mixture of cells and nutrients instead of ink. We've... still got work to do on the design front.
Both are pretty primitive in what they can do for now, and have severe limitations.
DNA Synthesis still needs an actual template strand (The DNA you want to copy has to be present), as far as I know, and Bioprinting requires live cells.
But what if you want to print an organism you've studied, whose genetic code and cellular composition you know, but you have no access to said organism or it's cellular components.. say, it's from Mars ?
That's the premise of Singularityhubs recent article on the Digital To Biological Converter, the brainchild of Craig Venter (You know... the guy who made the first synthetic organism):
The year is 2030. In a high-security containment lab, scientists gathered around a towering machine, eagerly awaiting the first look at a newly discovered bacterium on Mars.
With a series of beeps, the machine—a digital-to-biological converter, or DBC—signaled that it had successfully received the bacterium’s digitized genomic file. Using a chemical cocktail comprised of the building blocks of DNA, it whirled into action, automatically reconstructing the alien organism’s genes letter-by-letter.
Within a day, scientists had an exact replica of the Martian bacterium.
source: Singularity Hub article
You can find more information on the concept of Digital Biology and the Digital to Biological Converter by following the links mentioned in the post above.
So. What would this technology allow ?
Well, as the article (and the many other articles on the subject I perused before writing this) says, it could be used to "transport" extraterrestrial lifeforms to earth with minimal risk of death, contamination, etc...
It is also stated that, with a machine that can make proteins, we could use it to manufacture medicines, vaccines, food...
Pretty much anything biological we can imagine (realistically of course... You'd need a very big one to make an elephant... and making a complete living organism poses the problem of maintaining it living -- and sane -- during printing).
There's still some way to go, but it's basically yet another foray of this concept of printing everything into our daily lives.
Though I have to say... I hope you'll allow us geneticists and other biologists to tinker with our dna a bit before we get this going in every home.
If possible make us all a tad bit less prone to killing each other... I can imagine modifying parts of the primitive instinctual systems to be less reactive, and more reasoned.
but that's just another one of my crazy ideas ;)
Oh, and sorry for not posting in a while. My summer job working mornings at the supermarket stocking shelves is... kind of exhausting. Given that every 2 days I also work the afternoons, I tend to just collapse on the sofa with a book... or more recently with my phone to keep myself up in the rankings for Coven.
I wholeheartedly hope you'll all come join me, at least to test the game out.
Especially since my constant communications with the Devs has made them publish my Steemit post as an officially "endorsed" view of the app on their FB page !
They're very nice, and aren't too annoyed with me and the other 2-3 people who keep discovering ways to game the system or new bugs ;)