We Solve for X: Omri Amirav-Drory on synthetic life toolkits

Life may be the software that makes its own hardware, but where is the compiler? If we plan to start programming life itself, we are going to need a radically different and better tool kit than the one available to geneticists today. Omri lays out a concrete vision for how such a tool would work and for how it would be used to create the bio-products our future needs so badly.

Omri is the founder & CEO of Genome Compiler Corp, a Synthetic Biology venture. His background is in biochemical and structural studies of membrane protein complexes involved in bio-energetics.

[blazearmoru]

I have an urge to cry at just how beautiful this idea is... I think I'm gona change my major now. :(

[ramalama]

This stuff needs more views. Very informative. Just another technology that gives me hope for the future.

[Dicertification]

Resident Evil comes to mind.

But this is incredible stuff.

[yiqingliang]

Do we have full knowledge of the function of the synthetic life? Or at least can predict the function?

[iceplayer]

i feel like every word he's saying, I'm responding with "Woo!!! So cool!" =D

[Voracle]

Luckily, we don't need to write the compiler either. Craig Venter has already figured out the compiler. If someone else has figured out how to build a compiler and built it, then the rest of us only needs to know how to write the program. Tools are on its ways to show you the diagrams of the program.

[pietervanboheemen]

Looks like a great piece of software. The whole entourage about saving the planet makes it look a bit silly though. You don't just add a few missing steps in a metabolic pathway without decent flux analysis and a lot of optimization in the lab. Hopefully a piece software like this can support those efforts.

[Voracle]

The first time I wrote a program, it gave me an error. Today I can write Hello World pretty well, most times.

[LinyEasow]

So, they are at last coming to acknowledge that a code is there which is of course designed like a computer code. Do you know how much more complex the ATCG code is? Even the 15 billion years would not be enough to get a random chance to even code for a protein.

[IdeaBoxful]

You are defining computers at a narrow interpretation of the computers we use. But on a grander scale nature itself a grand computer for that matter carbon is the building block of computation. Please refer Singularity from Ray Kurzweil to elaborate on this idea

[GMTaelin]

@ZeroRyoko if we ever get to this point I'm sure we'll not be worrying with ebola.

[LinyEasow]

He used the word "Tools of Creation" .

[TheSelfGoverned]

With great power comes great responsibility.

(Cheesy, but relevant)

[BPMan]

Applause @ the bio street lamp in min 10:37

[IdeaBoxful]

@erubin I would like to point out that living things are continuously modifying themselves to environmental stimuli. And those inputs are biochemical or biomechanical in nature. And that too is programming... and it can be nasty too. You catch a disease in this case. At the DNA level it can lead to the process of eevolutionary mutation. It is programming too. It is just that we are intervening at that scale using DNA which is the code of life rather than using less accurate chemical inputs

[NicholasOsto]

what if people spoke of solutions, instead of problems with solutions?

[thejavoo]

the problem is that....all the power of synthetic biology that can be good and helpful in some cases
can be weapon of distraction in the hand of the bad guys....and the bad guys already control all this field ....so we are in bad spot and we need to fight those psychopath

[download]

Really cool idea, but I don't think it'll be quite as easy as he makes it out to be. You don't just insert firefly genes into an oak tree. You have to find exactly what genes are responsible for producing the right combination light-emitting chemicals and then figure out how to integrate them into an oak tree's genome. It would probably take some experimentation, and at $1, 000 per test, not a lot of people will want to do that.
You need to be able to order known-functioning organisms.

[LinyEasow]

So you are proving my point that it is complex and if those simple life proteins which kick started replication, existed, then it was packaged information and had to come from an intelligent source, the kind we will take 10 more years to accomplish. Random chances is a lie.

[guilloutube]

what if you accidentally create some living form that would compromise the ecosystem . not only talking about intentional destructive behaviour . but also accidental destructiveness .. maybe like transgenic agriculture techniques that seems attractive but has bad effects over ecosystems