Jason Warriner » science

World's First Biotic Video Game

jaywar — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 21:33:53 +0000

Some geniuses at Stanford came up with a video game played by controlling single cell paramecium.

First Synthetic Life Form

jaywar — Fri, 21 May 2010 00:08:14 +0000

On the subject of synthetic life, scientists today announced they they created the first synthetic bacteria cell.

Synthetic Water Sounds

jaywar — Wed, 19 May 2010 15:51:23 +0000

Scientists created synthesized water drop sounds by modeling the way a real water drop creates sound.

Synth Pork

jaywar — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 04:07:03 +0000

A few months ago, dutch scientists managed to grow in the lab, what was described as “soggy pork.” Which is interesting and somewhat disturbing. Maybe in the future we will all be eating lab meat… I’ll try it. Actually, I’m kind of excited to try it, but it seems like it will never equal the real thing but perhaps it will create something totally new. Test tube tube steaks?

See-Through Fish Spawned in Japanese Lab

jaywar — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:48:11 +0000

Time to ring in the new year with a quick science post: Japanese scientists have created a species of fish with see through scales! It’s like a living Visible Man model. Check it out here. The Tree Hugger post points out that such see-through skin occurs naturally in some fish (there are some great photos of these bizarre fish on their post). Hannah wants a pocket elephant, and I agree, if we’re going to start making custom animals, a pocket elephant would be nice. But we decided that there would be some sort of unavoidable problem if they made them—perhaps they would end up with very sharp teeth and fart a lot? Who knows…

Synthetic Biology at Home

jaywar — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 05:54:27 +0000

I have been meaning to write a post about this for a while (I have several lined up actually, so stay tuned). Then this morning, walking past a newspaper vending machine I noticed that the S.F. Chronicle has a big front page article on this titled “Do-it-Yourself biology on rise.” And a month or two back, The New Yorker also did an article about synthetic biology. So this is obviously starting to penetrate the mass media and will gradually become part of the public consciousness, just like cloning did in the ‘90s.

One of my interests and a frequent subject of my art is the human relationship to the natural world and this is a subject I have been following for a while now—Synthetic Biology being a more recent development that adds another layer to this existential (and/or ontological?) question: What is Natural and what is Synthetic (and does it matter)? I find the most interesting place to examine is where the two become unclear and synthetic biology fits perfectly in that discomfort zone.

The New Yorker article covers the use of synthetic biology to build better ways of dealing with malaria. Many synthetic biologists hope to make off-the-rack components for biology, similar to the components used in the electronics industry. With the concern over such direct manipulation of Nature comes an intense series of “what if” questions about the future of the natural world. Will we be able to engineer new species of domestic pets? Somwhere between a cat and a parrot? Bio-fuels that emit harmless, colored clouds of gas from the vehicles burning them (just because)? Will we be able to fuse biology to our electro-mechanical present, creating biological computers of every shape, size and color imaginable? As anxiety inducing as synthetic biology may be, the possibilities seem endlessly exciting and as we head further into a biological future that will be unavoidably altered by the gradual warming of the Earth, we have no choice but to develop this technology with the hope that we can solve some of our current and future needs while being mindful of the dangers of such fundamental power.