[Paleopsych] re: bacterial engineering and our future in space
Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.
ljohnson at solution-consulting.com
Sun Nov 27 22:59:33 UTC 2005
And materialists say that God is an unlikely explanation . . .
Lynn
Steve Hovland wrote:
> One of those guys, but I can't remember either.
> Whichever one he was, he also did a lot of acid.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> *From:* Jill Andresevic [mailto:andresevic at earthlink.net]
> *Sent:* Saturday, November 26, 2005 9:29 AM
> *To:* Steve Hovland; The new improved paleopsych list;
> isaacsonj at hotmail.com; 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
>
> 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]
> <mailto:paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org%5D>*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&adxnnlx=1132979630-umqKos8HcAa3U8FsuKGPrQ&pagewanted=print
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/24/national/24film.html?adxnnl=1&emc=eta1&adxnnlx=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 s*equences 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
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> ----------
> 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
>
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