Animals as Chemical Factories • Hacker News Board

Re: Animals as Chemical Factories

#61

Post by daemonk » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 7:30 AM UTC

tomohelix wrote: post #27

daemonk wrote: post #4

Cell-free synthesis is the next step. Theres slow progress, but very interesting operational models if it works.

I have strong doubt it will work. On paper we are just removing an arbitrary boundary that is the cell membrane/wall and combine trillions of cells together to form a giant cell. So it sounds very reasonable and attractive in engineering terms. But these are biological systems inherently designed/evolved to work in one special condition that is the cytoplasm of the host... Any engineer would know the kind of troubles…

TXTL systems already works. And there are antibodies (not many) that can only be produced cell free.

The problem is really scale.

Re: Animals as Chemical Factories

#62

Post by aziaziazi » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 1:05 PM UTC

evoke4908 wrote: post #48

globular-toast wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That used to be true when a pig would feed an entire family for a year. You're about 100 years out of date if you think this is still the case.

Please feel free to point out which parts of the comment are incorrect.

The grassland is presented as a given, but often they were created for the cattles.

Long time ago, my country used to be primal forest.

Some centuries ago most of it has been converted to “usable forest” where people grow food and wood.

Today it’s only crops and ~natural~ grassland for cattle.

Re: Animals as Chemical Factories

#63

Post by aziaziazi » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 1:16 PM UTC

throw939494 wrote: post #37

benchmarkist wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about we leave the silk worms alone.

Silk worms would starve to death if left alone.

Did they agree on to be later breed, boil then breed their kids and boils them too? This is crazy. We all know the reason we feed them is for our own interest.

Re: Animals as Chemical Factories

#64

Post by aziaziazi » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 1:19 PM UTC

throw939494 wrote: post #33

benchmarkist wrote: post #5

Yet another instance of how people view the biosphere as a resource to be exploited for their own monetary profit and short-term benefit. That type of logic and thinking is a dead end. I've never had a silk robe and I doubt I would be any better off if I did have one. I'd much prefer clean air, water, and unpoisoned land for growing nutritious food.

Silk worm industry is the definition of long-term sustainable exploitation of biosphere. It was done for thousand years, with minimal resources, no polution, it captures CO2... It only takes a few worms and some leafs! Chemical alternatives are poluting and poising, land air and waters!

It takes a few worms and lots of leafs. Got a friend in that industry and the partnership with Brazil is flourishing.

Re: Animals as Chemical Factories

#65

Post by aziaziazi » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 1:21 PM UTC

alphan0n wrote: post #40

benchmarkist wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about we leave the silk worms alone.

Pretty rich coming from someone sending virtue signals from a device I presume isn’t constructed from twigs and berries. Must be difficult as a person who doesn’t exploit the biosphere.. you’ll have to let us know how you mastered photosynthesis.

Can’t achieve perfection so goodness is out of question?

Re: Animals as Chemical Factories

#66

Post by immibis » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 2:51 PM UTC

082349872349872 wrote: post #10

> Today, companies such as Twist Bioscience can synthesize DNA for about $0.07 per base. Marburg (what about Ebola?) has only ~20k bp, so ... about USD 3k to synthesise?

DNA synthesis companies try to detect if the DNA you want to synthesize is any known virus, so they can call the bio-terrorism police.

Re: Animals as Chemical Factories

#67

Post by throw939494 » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 6:40 PM UTC

aziaziazi wrote: post #63

throw939494 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silk worms would starve to death if left alone.

Did they agree on to be later breed, boil then breed their kids and boils them too? This is crazy. We all know the reason we feed them is for our own interest.

Of course they agreed. It is like little boys and cutting digs. They just love that shit!

Re: Animals as Chemical Factories

#68

Post by aziaziazi » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 7:02 PM UTC

throw939494 wrote: post #67

aziaziazi wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they agree on to be later breed, boil then breed their kids and boils them too? This is crazy. We all know the reason we feed them is for our own interest.

Of course they agreed. It is like little boys and cutting digs. They just love that shit!

You are so fun man I wonder why you don’t use your real account to gather lol points.

Re: Animals as Chemical Factories

#69

Post by MrMcCall » Wed, Dec 18, 2024, 1:03 PM UTC

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #26

MrMcCall wrote: post #11

Note that this is another difference between we human beings and the rest of the animals. Yes, non-human animals can take advantage of other animals' chemical factories (ants' use of aphids' sugar excretions come to my mind), but only we human beings can use our abstract conceptual thinking ability and scientific process to discover the nature of nature's chemistry and then put that knowledge to use. After my first-g…

To give some humility, we've been around for hundreds of thousands of years as a species and for most of that time we could not have done what you've stated above. Farming, cities, animal husbandry, etc. are very very new for homo sapiens. You really can't use "thing humans do in modern times" as an indicator of the superiority of humans. For a start no individual human could do something like build an industrial pro…

One with no humility has no humility to give.

Anyone who starts a sentence with "You really can't use" is preaching from atop their perch of various sh_ts, horsesh_t and bullsh_t, especially. Get over youself.