[Paleopsych] re: bacterial engineering and our future in space
Steve Hovland
shovland at mindspring.com
Sat Nov 26 23:53:50 UTC 2005
These are exciting ideas you are writing about!
-----Original Message-----
From: Joel Isaacson [mailto:isaacsonj at hotmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, November 26, 2005 12:41 PM
To: andresevic at earthlink.net; shovland at mindspring.com;
paleopsych at paleopsych.org; eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il
Cc: jz at bigbangtango.net; sjlee at howardbloom.net; kblozie at yahoo.com;
idigdarwin at yahoo.com; BobKrone at aol.com; ohbeeb at yahoo.com
Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] re: bacterial engineering and our future in
space
Hi Jill,
Yes! Francis Crick (with Leslie Orgle) suggested something of the kind
more than 30 years ago... I am writng a paper that, in fact, concludes
with this theme. Following is an exrept:
Futuristic research directions. Panspermia relates to a hypothesis that
the seeds of life are prevalent throughout the universe, and that life on
our planet began by such seeds landing on it from outer space and
propagating themselves.
Francis Crick (with Leslie Orgel) suggested in 1973 a theory of directed
panspermia, where seeds of life (such as DNA fragments) may have been
purposely spread by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization. Critics argue
that space travel is damaging to life because of exposure to radiation,
cosmic rays and stellar winds.
Introduce now the notion of telepanspermia which postulates panspermia
that is guided by means of coded fantomark patterns (or their streaks), not
necessarily through the physical transport of actual "seeds" via meteors,
comets, and the like.
Telepanspermia may be guided by means akin to pilot waves in Bohmian
quantum mechanics. So, working on guiding mechanisms in telepanspermia may
converge with non-local hidden variable theories in fundamental physics.
Development of an information theory that is extended to fantomark-coded
messages and streaks would be crucial, as it would facilitate the invention
of superior intelligent artifacts; could hold a key to communication with
extraterrestrial modes of intelligence; and eventually help us understand
our cosmic ancestry and the relationship between implicate and explicate
orders, as outlined by David Bohm. Ref [ ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
From: Jill Andresevic <andresevic at earthlink.net>
To: Steve Hovland <shovland at mindspring.com>,The new improved paleopsych
list
<paleopsych at paleopsych.org>,<isaacsonj at hotmail.com>,<eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il>
CC:
<jz at bigbangtango.net>,<sjlee at howardbloom.net>,<kblozie at yahoo.com>,<idigdarwi
n at yahoo.com>,<BobKrone at aol.com>,<ohbeeb at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] re: bacterial engineering and our future in
space
Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 12:28:34 -0500
Steve / Howard, I read that Watson or Crick (not sure which one) wrote
about DNA being sent to Earth on a spaceship, because his theory was Earth
could not create life, therefore life had to brought here from another place
(interesting how this is not something well known, if indeed it is true).
This also could connect to the fact that a pig and a chicken and a human
embryo all look very much the same early in embryonic development, since I
am speculating that there was one form of DNA that then evolved into
different life forms. I am not a professional scientist like most of you (I
am guessing), just a fan of Howard’s. Curious as to what you think of this,
if anything. Jill
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
From: "Steve Hovland" <shovland at mindspring.com>
Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 06:52:45 -0800
To: "The new improved paleopsych list" <paleopsych at paleopsych.org>,
<isaacsonj at hotmail.com>, <eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il>
Cc: <jz at bigbangtango.net>, <sjlee at howardbloom.net>, <kblozie at yahoo.com>,
"Jill Andresevic" <andresevic at earthlink.net>, <idigdarwin at yahoo.com>,
<BobKrone at aol.com>, <ohbeeb at yahoo.com>
Subject: RE: [Paleopsych] re: bacterial engineering and our future in
space
Some people think our DNA came here from space
encapsulated in bacteria...
Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org
[mailto:paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org]On Behalf Of HowlBloom at aol.com
Sent: Friday, November 25, 2005 8:50 PM
To: isaacsonj at hotmail.com; eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il
Cc: paleopsych at paleopsych.org; jz at bigbangtango.net;
sjlee at howardbloom.net; kblozie at yahoo.com; Jill Andresevic;
idigdarwin at yahoo.com; BobKrone at aol.com; ohbeeb at yahoo.com
Subject: [Paleopsych] re: bacterial engineering and our future in
space
Joel--The article you sent, the one below, is not only amazing. It
dovetails with a piece of poetry I wrote as a treatment for a short film in
2001.
As usual, the poem was inspired immensely by my interchanges with
Eshel. Take a look:
Could swarms of robo-microbes
Made by humans and biology
The techno teams
That come from dreams
The wet dreams of technology
Could cyborg microbes by the trillions
Launched as space communities
Explore the dark beyond our skies
Thrive on starlight, climb and dive
through wormholes and through nebulae?
Could they re-landscape Einstein’s space
And tame time with phrenology?
Could they ride herd
on mass stampedes
of x-rays and raw energy
corralling flares spat by black holes
at the cores of galaxies?
Could genes retooled
In swarms of cells
Become our new conquistadors?
Could they explore
Galactic shores
And synapse reports
To our brains?
From global thinking
Could we go
To cosmos-hopping megaminds
One small step for E. coli
A giant step for human kind?
The article:
Retrieved November 25, 2005, from the World Wide Web
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/24/national/24film.html?adxnnl=1&emc=eta1&adx
nnlx=1132979630-umqKos8HcAa3U8FsuKGPrQ&pagewanted=print ------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------- November 24,
2005 Live From the Lab, a Culture Worth a Thousand Words By ANDREW POLLACK
Your portrait in a petri dish? Scientists have created living photographs
made of bacteria, genetically engineering the microbes so that a thin sheet
of them growing in a dish can capture and display an image. Bacteria are
not about to replace conventional photography because it takes at least two
hours to produce a single image. But the feat shows the potential of an
emerging field called synthetic biology, which involves designing living
cellular machines much as electrical engineers might design a circuit.
"We're actually applying principles from engineering into designing cells,"
said Christopher A. Voigt, assistant professor of pharmaceutical chemistry
at the University of California, San Francisco, and a leader of the
photography project, which is described in a paper being published today in
the journal Nature. One team of synthetic biologists is already trying to
engineer bacteria to produce a malaria drug that is now derived from a tree
and is in short supply. And J. Craig Venter, who led one team that
unraveled the human DNA sequence, has said he now wants to synthesize
microbes to produce hydrogen for energy. The technology could also be used
to create new pathogens or synthesize known ones. So far, however, most
synthetic biology accomplishments have been like the bacterial film -
somewhat bizarre demonstrations of things that can easily be done with
electronics. Synthetic biologists have, for instance, made the biological
equivalent of an oscillator, getting cells to blink on and off. To make the
bacterial film, common E. coli bacteria were given genes that cause a black
pigment to be produced only when the bacteria are in the dark. The camera,
developed at the University of Texas, Austin, is a temperature-controlled
box in which bacteria grow, with a hole in the top to let in light. An
image on a black-and-white 35-millimeter slide is projected through the
hole onto a sheet of the microbes. Dark parts of the slide block the light
from hitting the bacteria, turning those parts of the sheet black. The
parts exposed to light remain the yellowish color of the growth medium. The
result is a permanent, somewhat eerie, black-and-yellowish picture.
Scientists involved in the project said they envisioned being able to
use light to direct bacteria to manufacture substances on exquisitely small
scales. "It kind of gives us the ability to control single biological cells
in a population," said Jeffrey J. Tabor, a graduate student in molecular
biology at Texas. Scientists, of course, have been adding foreign genes to
cells for three decades, and the distinction between synthetic biology and
more conventional genetic engineering is not always clear. Proponents of
synthetic biology say genetic engineering so far has mainly involved
transferring a single gene from one organism into another. The human
insulin gene, for instance, is put into bacteria, which then produce the
hormone. Each project, they say, requires a lot of experimentation, in
contrast to true engineering, like building a microchip or a house, which
uses standardized parts and has a fairly predictable outcome. "We haven't
been able to transform it into a discipline where you can simply and
predictably engineer biological systems," said Drew Endy, an assistant
professor of biological engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. "It means the complexity of things we can make and can afford
to make are quite limited." Professor Endy and colleagues at M.I.T. have
created a catalog of biological components, which they call BioBricks,
which are sequences of DNA that can perform particular functions like
turning on a gene. Still, since cells differ from one another and are
extremely complex, it is open to question how predictable biological
engineering can ever be. M.I.T. has also begun holding a competition for
college students to design "genetically engineered machines." The bacterial
camera was an entrant in 2004 and was made in part using BioBricks. Mr.
Tabor said the idea for bacterial photography came from Zachary Booth
Simpson, a digital artist who has been learning about biology at the
university. By chance, the Texas team learned that Professor Voigt in San
Francisco and one of his graduate students, Anselm Levskaya, had already
developed a bacterial light sensor. So the two groups teamed up. The E.
coli bacterium was chosen because it is easy for genetic engineers to work
with. But since E. coli live in the human gut, they cannot sense light. Mr.
Voigt and Mr. Levskaya put in a gene used by photosynthetic algae to
respond to light. The bacteria were also given genes to make them produce
an enzyme that would react with a chemical added to the growth medium. When
that reaction occurs, a black precipitate is produced. The scientists
created sort of a chain reaction inside the bacteria. When the bacteria are
in the dark, the enzyme is produced, turning the medium black. When the
bacteria are exposed to light, production of the enzyme is shut off.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search
Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top
----------
Howard Bloom
Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the
Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big
Bang to the 21st Century
Recent Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York
University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute
www.howardbloom.net
www.bigbangtango.net
Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member:
Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project;
founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of
Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American
Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and
Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board
member: Institute for Accelerating Change ; executive editor -- New
Paradigm book series.
For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see:
www.paleopsych.org
for two chapters from
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of
History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the
Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/paleopsych/attachments/20051126/3d3e8608/attachment.html>
More information about the paleopsych
mailing list