DIY genetic engineering

Here is a link to an Interesting Article from Sunday's (2/14/10) NYT Magazine: Do-It-Yourself Genetic Engineering. The article describes the bubbling new field of synthetic biology, a a step or two beyond traditional genetic engineering -- instead of adding new genes to existing species to change their properties, synthetic biology is more about assembling new organisms from genetic legos.

It's more next-gen technology revolution stuff: "synthetic biologists imagine nature as a manufacturing platform: all living things are just crates of genetic cogs; we should be able to spill all those cogs out on the floor and rig them into whatever new machinery we want." With the added possibility of creating self-replicating factories.

Which is both fascinating and terrifying -- the article references "bio-terrorism", but that's only a minor issue I think compared to what the article describes as "bio-errorism". When fiddling with stuff, if anything can go wrong it will -- that's just the nature of technology. Mainly you want to minimize downside risk so that no one gets hurt. Nature-as-genetic-laboratory is incredibly cautious. It has a vigorous quality assurance department, and runs any new developments through a lengthy testing and shakeout process.

[Cynicism / realism alert] Why am I not so confident about the same when money is on the table?

And then there is the utter reduction of nature to machine. Is that all there is?

jd