QUESTION: Can you identify the
one sentence in this post that is fictional, i.e., that hasn’t happened or isn’t
happening right now in the biotech world? Think carefully before answering.
A startup in San
Francisco, Cambrian Genomics, is the first to assemble, sequence, and “laser-print”
customized DNA, allowing customers to edit and create new species of plants and
animals. The company has major Silicon Valley venture funding.
Here’s
how Cambrian processes an order for “special-order” genes. First it adds DNA
chemicals millions of times onto tiny beads layered onto glass with what could
be described as a “god machine” that assigns a fateful color to each DNA chemical. Then a laser
“analyzes” the colors, and it recognizes the correct ones by separating them
from the incorrect ones. The chosen strands are “printed” into a powder on a
small plastic plate that may be inserted into the cells of an organism.
One company using
Cambrian technology, Petomics, is making a probiotic for dogs and cats that
makes their poop smell like bananas. The technology was also behind a
Kickstarter crowdfunding startup that makes plants that glow in the dark. The
sponsors claim it is the first step in fully replacing the traditional
lightbulb by creating “sustainable natural lighting” made from synthetic
biological material. After the project
was fully funded, Kickstarter announced its new policy that it will not promote
funding for genetically-engineered organisms.
On the drawing
boards are cow-free milk and “animal-free” meat. But if the meat doesn’t come
from animals, where does it come from? And does that mean we can also create
animals with something other than good old-fashioned flesh? Also on the drawing
board are Bio-BUDs, so named because they are biological “blow-up dolls.”
Creepy.
The
founder of Cambrian Genomics, Austin Heinz, wants to make “totally new
organisms” that have never existed. He believes we’re not far off from Mom and
Dad getting in on the act. Because the technology will let parents digitally
design their children, that twinkle in their eye may prove to be the blinking
cursor on their computer screen.
At present the
company does a check before shipping it out to make sure that what it has
created for the customer isn’t Black Plague or some other known and
readily-identifiable disaster in the making. As orders increase, the company
won’t have time to do that, but it expects that it should be able to ship to a
third-party vendor who can provide that service.
“It is the most powerful
technology humans have ever created,” Heinz is quoted as saying. “Hydrogen
bombs can destroy whole planets, but this is a technology that can create
planets. This is the greatest human achievement of all time — the ability to
read and write life, because that’s who we are.”
I understand – or
I’m coming to slowly understand – that life can be “written” by creating and
editing DNA, including that of humans. When speaking of “reading” people, I’ve
only understood that to mean the ability to watch and decipher the code behind
another’s words, gestures, and actions, making it possible in an imperfect
science to come to conclusions about that person’s true nature. But what if “reading” people, or experimenting with their "recipe,"were as easy as reading, writing, or revising a cookbook?
ANSWER: The Bio-BUDs are fictional. In
the novel the company Primal Urge is developing a product line by that name. The rest of it about Cambrian Genomics is all true.
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