Something something Torment, something something Nexus, something something Don’t Create the Torment Nexus. /s In all seriousness, while there’s rightfully a lot to be concerned about with this...
In all seriousness, while there’s rightfully a lot to be concerned about with this advance in synthetic biology, this has immense potential in medicine (imagine a viral antibiotic for TB, MRSA, etc), ecosystem restoration (custom, humane sterilants for invasive plants and animals), and waste management (bacteria designed to selectively decompose plastics).
Oof, yeah, that'd be a horror scenario. There are a lot of plastics doing extremely important work that, should they start degrading, would put us in a world of hurt. E.g. if ABS were...
bacteria designed to selectively decompose plastics
Oof, yeah, that'd be a horror scenario. There are a lot of plastics doing extremely important work that, should they start degrading, would put us in a world of hurt. E.g. if ABS were biodegradable, sewage pipes everywhere would start turning into dirt. Metal roofs (the non-galvalume ones, at least) work because they're coated in plastic (PVDF). Car tyres would start failing left, right, and centre. At least knee replacements would be safe, so long as the human immune system kept them protected.
There is a scifi book I read many years ago about a situation like this - there was a huge Valdez-like oil spill in SF Bay and in order to clean it up they release a GM-bacteria designed to eat...
There is a scifi book I read many years ago about a situation like this - there was a huge Valdez-like oil spill in SF Bay and in order to clean it up they release a GM-bacteria designed to eat petroleum and it wound up disintigrating the world's plastics, which caused.... issues.
Ill Wind, it's called. Don't recall the quality of the story/writing.
Reminds me of how at some point, it became impossible to manufacture certain drugs thanks to some polymorphic crystals becoming abundant in the process. A bacteria like that would quickly spread...
Reminds me of how at some point, it became impossible to manufacture certain drugs thanks to some polymorphic crystals becoming abundant in the process.
A bacteria like that would quickly spread everywhere and change the perceived characteristics of plastics entirely.
Surprisingly common thing in drug development. The labs I work with have had to deal with this kind of issue a few times. Kind of like ice nine from Cat's Cradle but a lot less dramatic. That's...
Surprisingly common thing in drug development. The labs I work with have had to deal with this kind of issue a few times. Kind of like ice nine from Cat's Cradle but a lot less dramatic. That's why there's a lot of formulation and stability work that goes into drugs. I don't know if it's that terrifying these days. This wikipedia section states that they switched to a solid dispersion form. There are many ways to do this, but it's essentially mixing the drug with polymer in a way that prevents crystallization. Although they have their own potential issues, these are very popular nowadays because they more or less guarantee exposure.
IIRC when you do synthetic biology you make it so that your culture can only grow in a specialised environment (like you have to provide essential nutrient that cannot be found anywhere else) to...
IIRC when you do synthetic biology you make it so that your culture can only grow in a specialised environment (like you have to provide essential nutrient that cannot be found anywhere else) to precisely avoid those kind of leak to the environment. You also make it so that the bacteria can only grow within some temperature band and have the environment be completely different.
Presumably a plastic treatment plant with those kind of bacteria would employ a good amount of those kind of safeguards because a wild plasticophage would indeed be a dire scenario.
The researchers wondered if Evo could pick up these rules on its own. Instead of training it on text, they trained it on genetic sequences drawn from millions of animals, plants, microbes and viruses. All told, Evo scanned about nine trillion nucleotides.
Evo eventually recognized patterns common across the tree of life and used them to generate blueprints for new genes encoding proteins that could perform specific jobs. These results led the team to wonder if Evo could master not just single genes but also an entire genome.
As the A.I. would be able to handle only small genomes at first, the scientists decided to try to make viruses. While a human genome contains over three billion nucleotides, many viruses have genomes just a few thousand nucleotides long.
“It just felt like the obvious next step,” said Samuel King, a graduate student at Stanford University and an author of the new study. He and his colleagues gave Evo another round of training, this time on the 11 genes of Phi X-174 and about 15,000 of its closest relatives.
They made this choice in part because scientists know Phi X-174 intimately, having studied it for close to a century. And because it’s a bacteriophage that infects only E. coli, they knew that viruses similar to it would be safe.
[...]
They ended up making DNA molecules from 285 of Evo’s suggested sequences. When those genomes were ready to test, Mr. King and his colleagues inserted them into bacteria, which they spread across petri dishes.
[...]
As Mr. King and his colleagues tested more genomes, they saw more clear dots. All told, they discovered that 16 of Evo’s genomes produced viable new viruses.
They proved to be as resilient as natural ones. In fact, some multiplied faster than Phi X-174. “They’re not just sickly versions of stuff that already exists,” said Oliver Crook, a protein chemist at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the new study.
Dr. Crook cautioned that Evo’s viruses were not radically new creations. They tend to be very similar to natural species, relying on the same underlying biology.
[...]
The potential dangers were already on the minds of the researchers as they trained Evo. They did not provide the model with data about viruses that infect humans, and they excluded similar viruses that infect other animals, plants and fungi.
Amid the constant skepticism, marketing stunts and mountains of slop, this actually makes me excited for the future. I sure hope I don't miss the transhumanist revolution. I will be mildly upset...
Amid the constant skepticism, marketing stunts and mountains of slop, this actually makes me excited for the future. I sure hope I don't miss the transhumanist revolution. I will be mildly upset if it's only some genetically engineered babies that are eligible lol
Something something Torment, something something Nexus, something something Don’t Create the Torment Nexus. /s
In all seriousness, while there’s rightfully a lot to be concerned about with this advance in synthetic biology, this has immense potential in medicine (imagine a viral antibiotic for TB, MRSA, etc), ecosystem restoration (custom, humane sterilants for invasive plants and animals), and waste management (bacteria designed to selectively decompose plastics).
Oof, yeah, that'd be a horror scenario. There are a lot of plastics doing extremely important work that, should they start degrading, would put us in a world of hurt. E.g. if ABS were biodegradable, sewage pipes everywhere would start turning into dirt. Metal roofs (the non-galvalume ones, at least) work because they're coated in plastic (PVDF). Car tyres would start failing left, right, and centre. At least knee replacements would be safe, so long as the human immune system kept them protected.
There is a scifi book I read many years ago about a situation like this - there was a huge Valdez-like oil spill in SF Bay and in order to clean it up they release a GM-bacteria designed to eat petroleum and it wound up disintigrating the world's plastics, which caused.... issues.
Ill Wind, it's called. Don't recall the quality of the story/writing.
That's a great idea for a story.
Reminds me of how at some point, it became impossible to manufacture certain drugs thanks to some polymorphic crystals becoming abundant in the process.
A bacteria like that would quickly spread everywhere and change the perceived characteristics of plastics entirely.
I believe you're thinking of the Ritonavir polymorphism incident, which was indeed quite terrifying (it helps treat HIV/AIDS)!
Surprisingly common thing in drug development. The labs I work with have had to deal with this kind of issue a few times. Kind of like ice nine from Cat's Cradle but a lot less dramatic. That's why there's a lot of formulation and stability work that goes into drugs. I don't know if it's that terrifying these days. This wikipedia section states that they switched to a solid dispersion form. There are many ways to do this, but it's essentially mixing the drug with polymer in a way that prevents crystallization. Although they have their own potential issues, these are very popular nowadays because they more or less guarantee exposure.
IIRC when you do synthetic biology you make it so that your culture can only grow in a specialised environment (like you have to provide essential nutrient that cannot be found anywhere else) to precisely avoid those kind of leak to the environment. You also make it so that the bacteria can only grow within some temperature band and have the environment be completely different.
Presumably a plastic treatment plant with those kind of bacteria would employ a good amount of those kind of safeguards because a wild plasticophage would indeed be a dire scenario.
Hmm yes because there's not a very famous story and series of movies about how this can't go wrong at all.
If you like corny catastrophe stories, it's been done.
From the article:
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Amid the constant skepticism, marketing stunts and mountains of slop, this actually makes me excited for the future. I sure hope I don't miss the transhumanist revolution. I will be mildly upset if it's only some genetically engineered babies that are eligible lol