On 5/21/2010 11:59 PM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> At least now they can design cells (or just genome for now).  Someday,
>> they'll design genetically-enhaced neural cells and hope those make
>> them obsolete.
>
> Doubt it.
>
> Currently they've figured out how to modify a genome and insert it into
> a suitible organism. Nobody has yet come up with anything remotely
> approximating "design a cell" - more like "make a minute modification to
> an existing cell" (usually to make it produce some single chemical
> substance of interest to us). And even that doesn't always work.
> Designing a whole cell would be a radically larger undertaking.
>
Yeah. Most likely first step, now that they have managed to cobble 
together bits on a genome successfully, is, "lets see how much we can 
take out, before things stop working at all." In other words, what is 
the minimum you need for one of them to function. For example, recent 
re-examination of the human genome, and rechecking of a prior sequencing 
on it, seems to imply that most of the "junk" is **still** junk, with 
some rare exceptions, and that most of the previously detected "RNA 
encodings", where artifact errors. Cases where the prior method produces 
encodings where it wouldn't normally in a cell, or where positional 
errors resulted in a temporary activation of junk, which then didn't do 
anything anyway. From what I remember, there is a huge amount of that 
"junk" in human DNA, and like 20 times that in some microbes.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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