Bob
14th June 2015, 16:19
"Everything that’s alive can be made better.. and more useful to humankind, including human cells.
Plants can be made to take out much more carbon out of the atmosphere.
We can make humans that are born without disease that can live much longer.
We can make humans that can interface directly with computers by growing interfaces into the brain."
Did that freak you out or did you find it "fascinating.."
http://cambriangenomics.com/cambrian.jpg
So said Austen Heinz, the founder of the synthetic biology startup Cambrian Genomics..
Cambrian Genomics prints custom DNA sequences, but the company’s founder, Austen Heinz, sees that as just the beginning of what his firm’s technology can achieve. He recently told news outlets that he’d like to see customers be able to create their own creatures.
Heinz said there would need to be some ethical checks to make sure nothing “bad” is created, but that oversight should not come from the government. “We wouldn’t want the industry to be regulated.
"So, ‘How do we democratize creation without killing everyone?’ is basically the question.”
Strangely, Heinz at age 31 recently died (May 24, 2015) after all this was published. Odd? Coincidence or something more sinister?
http://www.the-scientist.com/images/Nutshell/June2015/heinz%20full.jpg Austen Heinz (center)
Heinz “worked to change the world by democratizing access to synthetic DNA through cost-effective, accurate DNA laser printing.”
Heinz, who earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Seoul National University in South Korea, began his career in synthetic biology as a member of the Duke iGEM team, a genetic engineering student competition. In 2011, he founded Cambrian Genomics.
“Austen was never afraid to speak his mind and his enthusiasm and dedication to synthetic biology and his company were an inspiration.”
The technique that he founded, 3D Rapid Laser Printing of DNA, allows for billions of DNA patterns to be accurately and rapidly reproduced, at hundreds of times LESS cost than other tedious methods.
General reference: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/43244/title/Synthetic-Biology-Entrepreneur-Dies/
Cambrian Genomics:
665 3rd Street, Suite 425
San Francisco, CA 94107
Phone
415-347-5529
Email
info@cambriangenomics.com
http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2013_07/soundbite.jpg?h=244&w=200
The Interview
With [the 3D printing company] MakerBot, you'd print out, say, a plastic dinosaur. With Cambrian, the idea is eventually you'd be able to print out your own little dinosaur that actually walks across the table.
Q: Where are you in that development process now? What do you produce here in this laboratory?
A: Right now we produce DNA for the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world.
Q: Your company has dramatically brought the price point [of creating DNA] down.
A: It's directly related to a phenomenon I think everyone has heard of, which is DNA sequencing. Fifteen years ago, no one got their DNA sequenced because it cost $6 billion. Now that can be done by a machine that can read millions or billions of DNA strands at a time. We simply leveraged sequencing technology to reduce the price of making or writing DNA.
Q: How do you see 3D printing shifting the way science is done in America?
A: Virtualization is going to take off. You'll be able to go from idea to finished product without ever touching anything physical. That's not how things work now. You go to an academic lab, it's miserable. They're spending 90 percent of their time cutting and pasting DNA from different creatures they collect from across the country. We want that to be 95 percent design analysis and 5 percent manual work—if there's any manual work.
Q: How do you feel about the regulatory environment for genetically modified organisms [GMOs] and the biotech space?
A: In the United States, we're pretty open on plants but we're pretty locked down on people. You go to Europe and it's the opposite. In the U.K. they're having three-parent babies. In the near future we're going to have lots of humans walking around Europe who are genetically modified. What's also funny is that many of those people are going to be part of anti-GMO organizations. So you'll have a genetically modified organism protesting the existence of genetically modified organisms.
In time we'll likely need to print out and fix our DNA. The issue with that is, unless you have an identical twin, your DNA is unique. And it's wrong. Everyone will need to be fixed at some point [because] you'll get cancer or some other disease. How do we do that with the current regulatory environment? The [Food and Drug Administration] doesn't approve things one-off. They'll approve a small molecule that you can give to everyone on earth. But everyone's unique and that molecule won't work. It's got to be very specific [to the] individual. Now we have these tools that are very precise. With this machine we can sequence a whole genome in a single run, all of your letters. With the machine in the other room, we can print out all of the letters. That power never existed before. So regulation on the medical side of things is going to need to catch up to that.
Q: What excites you most about this technology?
A: We're getting really close to the point where we can not only know the code of everything that's alive on the planet, but could change it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGyNyQ5IDUM
Plants can be made to take out much more carbon out of the atmosphere.
We can make humans that are born without disease that can live much longer.
We can make humans that can interface directly with computers by growing interfaces into the brain."
Did that freak you out or did you find it "fascinating.."
http://cambriangenomics.com/cambrian.jpg
So said Austen Heinz, the founder of the synthetic biology startup Cambrian Genomics..
Cambrian Genomics prints custom DNA sequences, but the company’s founder, Austen Heinz, sees that as just the beginning of what his firm’s technology can achieve. He recently told news outlets that he’d like to see customers be able to create their own creatures.
Heinz said there would need to be some ethical checks to make sure nothing “bad” is created, but that oversight should not come from the government. “We wouldn’t want the industry to be regulated.
"So, ‘How do we democratize creation without killing everyone?’ is basically the question.”
Strangely, Heinz at age 31 recently died (May 24, 2015) after all this was published. Odd? Coincidence or something more sinister?
http://www.the-scientist.com/images/Nutshell/June2015/heinz%20full.jpg Austen Heinz (center)
Heinz “worked to change the world by democratizing access to synthetic DNA through cost-effective, accurate DNA laser printing.”
Heinz, who earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Seoul National University in South Korea, began his career in synthetic biology as a member of the Duke iGEM team, a genetic engineering student competition. In 2011, he founded Cambrian Genomics.
“Austen was never afraid to speak his mind and his enthusiasm and dedication to synthetic biology and his company were an inspiration.”
The technique that he founded, 3D Rapid Laser Printing of DNA, allows for billions of DNA patterns to be accurately and rapidly reproduced, at hundreds of times LESS cost than other tedious methods.
General reference: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/43244/title/Synthetic-Biology-Entrepreneur-Dies/
Cambrian Genomics:
665 3rd Street, Suite 425
San Francisco, CA 94107
Phone
415-347-5529
info@cambriangenomics.com
http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2013_07/soundbite.jpg?h=244&w=200
The Interview
With [the 3D printing company] MakerBot, you'd print out, say, a plastic dinosaur. With Cambrian, the idea is eventually you'd be able to print out your own little dinosaur that actually walks across the table.
Q: Where are you in that development process now? What do you produce here in this laboratory?
A: Right now we produce DNA for the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world.
Q: Your company has dramatically brought the price point [of creating DNA] down.
A: It's directly related to a phenomenon I think everyone has heard of, which is DNA sequencing. Fifteen years ago, no one got their DNA sequenced because it cost $6 billion. Now that can be done by a machine that can read millions or billions of DNA strands at a time. We simply leveraged sequencing technology to reduce the price of making or writing DNA.
Q: How do you see 3D printing shifting the way science is done in America?
A: Virtualization is going to take off. You'll be able to go from idea to finished product without ever touching anything physical. That's not how things work now. You go to an academic lab, it's miserable. They're spending 90 percent of their time cutting and pasting DNA from different creatures they collect from across the country. We want that to be 95 percent design analysis and 5 percent manual work—if there's any manual work.
Q: How do you feel about the regulatory environment for genetically modified organisms [GMOs] and the biotech space?
A: In the United States, we're pretty open on plants but we're pretty locked down on people. You go to Europe and it's the opposite. In the U.K. they're having three-parent babies. In the near future we're going to have lots of humans walking around Europe who are genetically modified. What's also funny is that many of those people are going to be part of anti-GMO organizations. So you'll have a genetically modified organism protesting the existence of genetically modified organisms.
In time we'll likely need to print out and fix our DNA. The issue with that is, unless you have an identical twin, your DNA is unique. And it's wrong. Everyone will need to be fixed at some point [because] you'll get cancer or some other disease. How do we do that with the current regulatory environment? The [Food and Drug Administration] doesn't approve things one-off. They'll approve a small molecule that you can give to everyone on earth. But everyone's unique and that molecule won't work. It's got to be very specific [to the] individual. Now we have these tools that are very precise. With this machine we can sequence a whole genome in a single run, all of your letters. With the machine in the other room, we can print out all of the letters. That power never existed before. So regulation on the medical side of things is going to need to catch up to that.
Q: What excites you most about this technology?
A: We're getting really close to the point where we can not only know the code of everything that's alive on the planet, but could change it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGyNyQ5IDUM