Saturday, January 03, 2009

Homebrew life forms - oh joy

Those playful primates are at it again ...

Amateurs are trying genetic engineering at home - Yahoo! News

Using homemade lab equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge available online ... hobbyists are trying to create new life forms through genetic engineering...

In her San Francisco dining room lab, for example, 31-year-old computer programmer Meredith L. Patterson is trying to develop genetically altered yogurt bacteria that will glow green to signal the presence of melamine, the chemical that turned Chinese-made baby formula and pet food deadly...

Truly, a heartwarming tale of the creative impulse at work. It brings back fond memories of those days of "Homebrew computing", or, in my case, the Delta DOS User Group [1]. It's the sort of science experiment my daughter would particularly enjoy.

If history repeats itself, which it's somewhat prone to do, we'll see all manner of creativity. We may expect some "worms and viruses" of course -- girls will be girls after all.

That's no big problem. We'll just plug in the biological equivalent of, say, Norton antivirus. Hmm, come to think of it, Norton didn't work too well. Much better to switch operating systems; really, OS X has many advantages.

Oh, wait. We really don't know how to change our genetic operating systems.

This could be a problem ...

[1] Or was it the Delta DOS Users Group? Memory fails alas. Those were the BBS days, when we used Telnet at night to visit distant modems. Hmm. it appears I have just created just created what will be forever more be the preeminent "hit" on searches for the DDUG. RIP DDUG.

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