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Revision as of 11:18, 14 October 2009

Team:USTC/Human Practice

How do We Explain E. ADEM to Mr. Darwin?

Dear Mr. Darwin:

You have already known about Synthetic Biology, don't you? [http://dsc.discovery.com/technology/slideshow/synthetic-biologists-darwin.html] I'm gonna talk to you about our novel project in Synthetic Biology field. Since it is based on and closely related to the Evolutionism, I think you'll be interested.

As you have known, the same stuff called DNA stores all the secrets of life and dominate the features of creature individual. Synthetic Biologists are changing the DNA sequence 'designing and synthetizing' the new forms of life. But we are trying something new. We choose to do 'synthetizing and evolving' in a living creature. It sounds crazy, you may say, as other people may think.

We not only want to give evolution a direction but also try to make the process automatic as the first steam locomotive in the world of synthetic biology. It seems that we are employing one of the most powerful forces in the nature to creat what we want, perhaps a living thing. This prospect may leave many people jittery. I don't know whether you were jittery or not when you discovered the most deeply covered secret of evolution. We now find we can employ or even 'control' evolution. What I am sure is that you certainly had much stronger feelings about the power of the evolution than us after seeing the fossils in person on the voyage of the Beagle.

We have thought about this question seriously. The final purpose of our project is to evolve anything including a system--a system that holds the potential to be a new form of life. Is it true that when we finally reach this destination we will have the chance to play God?

We are not fearing the possible godlike power; we are fearing the inability to control it. We agree with what Pro. Caplan once pointed out:'It is hard to credit the view that God would give us the abilities to make new life forms and then argue that to do so crosses a line that God does not want crossed. If one takes a more secular view the fact that human beings can mimic random processes that allowed life to emerge is not especially threatening to faith in the divinity.'

However, as for the inability to control the power, there are serious potential risks while we are striving for this final purpose. It is the positive safety measures and prudent thinking that is being cried for. We are striving for the ability to control what we would create as urgently as we are striving for the benefits which would come along with the final purpose.

Safety

Nature (11/24/2005) once set a complete part talking about the synthetic biology. This the cover of the Journal that repeatedly rewarding us the controversial nature of our work.
We have long being wondering the puzzle ever since the moment we started that whether the story showed in the comic will become true in the future given what we are doing now. Is it safe for people to operate the experiment? What if the automatic evolution turned to be out of control? Will new virus and bacteria cause huge disaster because of our carelessness? Is it right or not for us to persue our ambition to play the role of God?

Please [http://www.nature.com/nature/comics/syntheticbiologycomic/index.html| click here] to see the commplete comic.

Experimental Safety

E.ADEM Safety

• BioBrick
  • AID-related Safety Problem: In our project, we employed AID as the functional part in the Variation Function which is responsible to change the evolution object. The AID works on single DNA and invert the base C to U by deamination.
  • Quorum-Sensing Safety Problem: Quorum-sensing device used to calculate population size and average score may lead to the formation of biofilm[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofilm].

• System
  • Restore the system

1.supervise the mutation.

2.Suicide Switch.

Security

BioBrick Security

Project Security

Code

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