Synthetic Biology: Engineering Open-Source Software with DNA
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Synthetic Biology: Engineering Open-Source Software with DNA
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Re: Synthetic Biology: Engineering Open-Source Software with DNA
#2Synthetic Biology is in great need for computational tools and expertise to help advance the field.
Platforms like ClothoCAD are great places for those interested in open-source software and syn-bio applications.
Re: Synthetic Biology: Engineering Open-Source Software with DNA
#3Synthetic Biology is in great need for computational tools and expertise to help advance the field. Platforms like ClothoCAD are great places for those interested in open-source software and syn-bio applications. http://www.clothocad.org/
nice you worked on Merlin
Re: Synthetic Biology: Engineering Open-Source Software with DNA
#4Synthetic Biology is in great need for computational tools and expertise to help advance the field. Platforms like ClothoCAD are great places for those interested in open-source software and syn-bio applications. http://www.clothocad.org/
Don't deceive yourself into thinking that you can program your way into biological research. Biological research has very little to do with apps/programming/web-development.
Synthetic biology requires an understanding of chemistry, molecular biology, and genetic structure.
Re: Synthetic Biology: Engineering Open-Source Software with DNA
#5First, DNA is not software and second, before we all get too excited about "Arudino for organisms", have a look at the actual parts:
http://partsregistry.org/Catalog
The biological world is very different from the world of man-made devices and you cannot expect to easily engineer, and even more so, to "program" things using DNA the way you build something from NAND gates or computer instructions - in engineering we strive very hard to make parts independent and abstract away low-level details, in biology everything is interacting all the time (even physically the molecules clash hundreds of times per second) and every low-level physical/chemical effect might be used to serve some purpose. Evolutionary "design" does not have any limits to the intellectual complexity of its results like our limited human intelligence forces us to have in our "purposeful" design process.
Even predicting the outcome of a single gene being expressed is very complicated, protein folding is now a separate field putting our knowledge of physics, chemistry, biology and computer science to a test, and what to say about predicting the interactions of those proteins inside the human body. I wish people would take a good university-level biology 101 course before making nonsensical simplifications and spreading those as "science news".
By the way, I do not doubt this is an interesting initiative and that some useful things will come out of it, I just strongly oppose the notion that we can all now "play with nature’s design".
Re: Synthetic Biology: Engineering Open-Source Software with DNA
#6First, DNA is not software and second, before we all get too excited about "Arudino for organisms", have a look at the actual parts: http://partsregistry.org/Catalog The biological world is very different from the world of man-made devices and you cannot expect to easily engineer, and even more so, to "program" things using DNA the way you build something from NAND gates or computer instructions - in engineering we s…
I totally agree with this! I wish we could "play with nature's design" like we can program computers. But alas, our technology is woefully inadequate for the task, and our understanding of the natural world is still sadly primitive. What is needed is a generation of people willing to commit themselves to basic science research.
Working in basic science is perhaps not as glamorous as working as an entrepreneur, a programmer, or whatever else. But over the course of a lifetime, the work is infinitely more satisfying.
Re: Synthetic Biology: Engineering Open-Source Software with DNA
#7First, DNA is not software and second, before we all get too excited about "Arudino for organisms", have a look at the actual parts: http://partsregistry.org/Catalog The biological world is very different from the world of man-made devices and you cannot expect to easily engineer, and even more so, to "program" things using DNA the way you build something from NAND gates or computer instructions - in engineering we s…
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Re: Synthetic Biology: Engineering Open-Source Software with DNA
#8Synthetic Biology is in great need for computational tools and expertise to help advance the field. Platforms like ClothoCAD are great places for those interested in open-source software and syn-bio applications. http://www.clothocad.org/
Don't deceive yourself into thinking that you can program your way into biological research. Biological research has very little to do with apps/programming/web-development. Synthetic biology requires an understanding of chemistry, molecular biology, and genetic structure.
DNA manipulation would be orders of magnitude more difficult and time consuming with out computers as would anything involving chemistry, molecular biology and understanding genetic structure.
Apps and programming/automation have everything to do with the future of the field, its not just test tubes.
Re: Synthetic Biology: Engineering Open-Source Software with DNA
#9First, DNA is not software and second, before we all get too excited about "Arudino for organisms", have a look at the actual parts: http://partsregistry.org/Catalog The biological world is very different from the world of man-made devices and you cannot expect to easily engineer, and even more so, to "program" things using DNA the way you build something from NAND gates or computer instructions - in engineering we s…
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Re: Synthetic Biology: Engineering Open-Source Software with DNA
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't deceive yourself into thinking that you can program your way into biological research. Biological research has very little to do with apps/programming/web-development. Synthetic biology requires an understanding of chemistry, molecular biology, and genetic structure.
DNA manipulation would be orders of magnitude more difficult and time consuming with out computers as would anything involving chemistry, molecular biology and understanding genetic structure. Apps and programming/automation have everything to do with the future of the field, its not just test tubes.
True, but from what I've seen biologist for the most part can get along just fine with only a basic knowledge of REGEX and spreadsheet software.
The biologist I've worked with tend to be a resourceful bunch, capable of solving difficult problems with simple tools.
EDIT: Granted, there is a growing need for data-scientist who can help sort through mountains of data for relevant information. But I don't think there is much need for pre-built software solutions. Each lab faces unique problems, and their software development needs, if any, are unique.