Self-replication should not imply nanotechnology. I’m not proposing self-replicating nanomachines here. Nanotechnology pseudoscience gives self-replication a bad name. It’s straightforward to build machines using other machines. It’s currently impossible to build synthetic machines anywhere close to animal-level complexity.
Presumably nanomachines (e.g. stuff like animal tissue) would be more efficient than today’s industry, just as a walking human uses less energy than a car driving the same distance. Problem is, biology is really complicated: nanomachines would presumably be like existing bacteria/viruses, or human cells, and no one has made synthetic life larger than a few cells. It’s also totally outside my field.
no one has made synthetic life larger than a few cells
Not even that. Plenty of tweaking things that already exist but to call anything that’s been done today “synthetic” is just marketing hype.
The Craig Venter Institute chemically synthesized the already-known genome of one bacterial species (no small feat, putting all the short fragments you can directly chemically synthesize together in the right order is HARD, they mostly did it inside yeast cells using the yeast’s DNA repair machinery) and blasted billions of copies of it into billions of bacteria of another species, and after a few days a probably single-to-double-digit number of the bacteria that got the synthesized genome blasted into them had lost their original genome and were running the new one and were built like the new genome’s species and made colonies. Their procedure for genome replacement only works on that particular species. They also have their ‘minimal genome project’, where they deleted genes from an existing bacterium one by one until they found the smallest viable set under laboratory conditions.
Numerous groups have synthesized viruses or particles-made-mostly-from-viral-proteins using synthetic DNA blasted into cells, but I hardly think that counts since again its mostly wild sequence and viruses often have single-digit numbers of proteins.
There was a big kadoo recently about E. coli bearing a single synthetic nucleotide pair in their genome (non ATGC) and while very cool and potentially useful in the future for attempts to expand the genetic code, it was also mutagenic and they needed to be kept in very specific conditions and coddled to keep it and not ‘repair’ the ‘defect’.
Modifying existing living things is another matter and has been done to all manner of single cell and multicellular creatures and I literally just did it yesterday. EDIT THE NEXT DAY: Success! The yeast integrated the DNA into the chromosome, now to check and make sure the protein fusion is actually doing what it’s supposed to do...
I’m not comparing futuristic nanotech with today’s industry. I’m comparing today’s self-replicating technology with today’s industry. You could also compare futuristic nanotech with futuristic industry, which will likely involve lots of nanotech. It will also most likely involve things that are not nanotech. There aren’t necessarily benefits from centralization, but presumably something would benefit. You can’t exactly fit a fusion generator inside a nanobot. You might be able to make a generator out of them, but it would be a lot easier to make it out of regular materials, and it’s not like you’re going to need to turn it into something else at a moment’s notice.
There’s more to danger than efficiency though. If humans are an integral part of the system, it’s all controlled. If they’re not, then if something goes wrong, you could at least blow up the powerplant or something. If it’s all stuff that works on a small scale, you’d have to get rid of every little group of nanomachines or they’d start reproducing again when you’re not looking.
Interesting. So nanotech will be less efficient than today’s industry? Then why do some people consider it more dangerous?
Self-replication should not imply nanotechnology. I’m not proposing self-replicating nanomachines here. Nanotechnology pseudoscience gives self-replication a bad name. It’s straightforward to build machines using other machines. It’s currently impossible to build synthetic machines anywhere close to animal-level complexity.
Presumably nanomachines (e.g. stuff like animal tissue) would be more efficient than today’s industry, just as a walking human uses less energy than a car driving the same distance. Problem is, biology is really complicated: nanomachines would presumably be like existing bacteria/viruses, or human cells, and no one has made synthetic life larger than a few cells. It’s also totally outside my field.
Not even that. Plenty of tweaking things that already exist but to call anything that’s been done today “synthetic” is just marketing hype.
The Craig Venter Institute chemically synthesized the already-known genome of one bacterial species (no small feat, putting all the short fragments you can directly chemically synthesize together in the right order is HARD, they mostly did it inside yeast cells using the yeast’s DNA repair machinery) and blasted billions of copies of it into billions of bacteria of another species, and after a few days a probably single-to-double-digit number of the bacteria that got the synthesized genome blasted into them had lost their original genome and were running the new one and were built like the new genome’s species and made colonies. Their procedure for genome replacement only works on that particular species. They also have their ‘minimal genome project’, where they deleted genes from an existing bacterium one by one until they found the smallest viable set under laboratory conditions.
Numerous groups have synthesized viruses or particles-made-mostly-from-viral-proteins using synthetic DNA blasted into cells, but I hardly think that counts since again its mostly wild sequence and viruses often have single-digit numbers of proteins.
There was a big kadoo recently about E. coli bearing a single synthetic nucleotide pair in their genome (non ATGC) and while very cool and potentially useful in the future for attempts to expand the genetic code, it was also mutagenic and they needed to be kept in very specific conditions and coddled to keep it and not ‘repair’ the ‘defect’.
Modifying existing living things is another matter and has been done to all manner of single cell and multicellular creatures and I literally just did it yesterday. EDIT THE NEXT DAY: Success! The yeast integrated the DNA into the chromosome, now to check and make sure the protein fusion is actually doing what it’s supposed to do...
It’s the capability that nanotech (atomically precise mechanisms) provides.
I’m not comparing futuristic nanotech with today’s industry. I’m comparing today’s self-replicating technology with today’s industry. You could also compare futuristic nanotech with futuristic industry, which will likely involve lots of nanotech. It will also most likely involve things that are not nanotech. There aren’t necessarily benefits from centralization, but presumably something would benefit. You can’t exactly fit a fusion generator inside a nanobot. You might be able to make a generator out of them, but it would be a lot easier to make it out of regular materials, and it’s not like you’re going to need to turn it into something else at a moment’s notice.
There’s more to danger than efficiency though. If humans are an integral part of the system, it’s all controlled. If they’re not, then if something goes wrong, you could at least blow up the powerplant or something. If it’s all stuff that works on a small scale, you’d have to get rid of every little group of nanomachines or they’d start reproducing again when you’re not looking.