Re: [DIYbio] This thing they call life

the thing is that in that discussion we have already come to terms that synbio as it was advocated mostly in the past, was a PR coup by some american companies and professors, without much substance. now it is to figure out where the actual potential lies, somewhere between current genetic engineering and some future version of synbio.
therefore it is important to define the matter we are talking about, to find access points where programming life (in a broader sense) will work and how this might turn out. all of this is in the context of this european regulation debate,
and i am trying to convince the people to not even further crack down on technology development as they already did on gene-tech. This needs good arguments though, thats why i asked for your input.
the mammalian cell-hacking approach by fussenegger is a good example, thanks for the links.

Am Donnerstag, 20. Februar 2014 16:13:11 UTC+1 schrieb Lisa Thalheim:

Hey,

I don't think defining life is your problem - defining synthetic biology is.

The other guy's position makes sense if he views synbio mainly as a means of production - which is kind of understandable, since synbio advocates have often been selling it as such in the past (think biofuels and artemisinin). Before this background, it kinda makes sense to limit synbio to cell-free systems.

So, your problem lies in convincing the other guy that synbio is about more than synthesizing biomolecules in large vats.

Stuff like this may be a good starting point for that: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24434884, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24061539

Cheers,
Lisa

On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 3:06 PM, Rüdiger Trojok <ruedi...@googlemail.com> wrote:

Hey everyone!

I am having some kind of theoretical issue right now, that is that I need to define life.

It is part of a job that I am doing for the Technikfolgenabschätzungsbüro beim Deutschen Bundestag,

discussing the implications of synthetic Biology. Some guy argued that Darwinian evolution is unpredictable

and that only cell free systems should be used for safety reasons – and to trash all other approaches.

I want to explain why cell free systems are nice, but you lose to much of the special functionality of cellular production

by restricting it to that.

So now I am currently trying to update the picture on life and evolution, supplementing it with

recent insights in this domain of research to convince him why hacking life is cool and what the thing is actually about.

Would be awesome to get your support, as this guy I am arguing against is a well established old biochemistry professor,

who got at least ten times as much money and time and personnel to bring up his arguments compared to me,

so a crowdsourced update on life and evolution would rock it J

 

A brief pitch by you of the main argument of the literature you cite would be ideal.

I will of course feed back the info I collected to the community, after some digestion time.

 

Can you help me with some cool papers you know about such terms like:

·         adaptive evolution (Lamarckian style)

·         Horizontal gene transfer

·         directed Hypermutation

·         the functional role of membranes

·         origin of life hypothesis

·         energetic of evolution

·         information concept (syntax and semantics, system of reference)

·         information storage (is it only DNA?)

·         Epigenetics

·         you name it

 

 

Best,

Rüdiger

 

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