Turning Biology into an Engineering Discipline

Imagine a Tree that grows in the shape of a Chair

What will be the role of our future and Biology?

Five Questions: Turning Microbes Into Micro Refineries

According to the above online article synthetic biologist Reshma Shetty predicts that we will eventually engineer organisms to grow everything that we manufacture today. This may be a huge jump, but as we move forward we all realize that life must change if we are to continue to coexist on this planet or any other planet for that matter.

If you google the company website run by Reshma Shetty and her agents this is the initial caption: 

The organism is the product.

Ginkgo BioWorks sells engineered organisms that make the world better. Ginkgo BioWorks was founded in 2008 by five MIT PhDs. The mission is to make biology easy to engineer. Only when biological engineering is fast and predictable will we fulfill the potential of biological technologies to revolutionize the provision of food, medicine, energy, and materials.

You treat biology like an engineer’s tool kit. how does that work? There’s all this genome sequencing data from different organisms all over the world. Think of that as a parts list. These organisms each have cool things that they do. If I want to build a system for biofuel, I can pull out enzymes that produce the fuel and put the parts together in different ways until I get yields high enough to compete with oil.

My suggestion concerning this odd article is to go to their website and read the information they provide:http://ginkgobioworks.com/tech.html

The introduction of modified organisms is a realitively new field and merits serious concerns. Do not be fooled into thinkg all is well. Ethical guidlines must be put into place in order to insure public safety. Some of the new organisms they claim to be perfecting are:

Electrofuels
Ginkgo BioWorks is engineering an organism for the energy industry in partnership with the DOE that converts electricity and CO2 to liquid transportation fuels.

Sulferisms
Petroleum refining generates 163 million tons of Hydrogen Sulfide annually. Ginkgo BioWorks is engineering an organism in partnership with the DOE to capture the energy in this waste product and convert it to usable fuels and valuable organic compounds.

Six Month Turnaround 
Ginkgo engineers deliver scale-up-ready organisms in six months for the production of renewable fine and specialty chemicals. Our customers include sugar refiners, flavor and fragrance companies, and other producers of fine chemicals.

All this information sounds impressive, but how will it protect the general public, how will it help the general public. These are the questions I have on the subject. It appears the interest of the company is to solely generate large sums of money. What a shallow existence to simply seek large sums of money. No good thing has ever come from the company that seeks only money. Along with the increase in technology many are forgetful of the increase in humaninology---a term I just coined. It means people must realize that people are not animals. We can no longer shove problems under the rug. The attitude of "get while the getting is good" only produces an atmosphere conducive to defeat and a future that is void of expression, love, and all the ingredients that make this world unique.

Do we live in a world that no longer cherishes humanity? Will we progress to a station in which people are of zero importance? To strive for money is hollow. In a parting comment Reshma says, "We want to democratize access so anyone can engineer biology."

Is this their idea of a joke? Do they feel as if they as the sole controlers of this industry? I think not and that God my life isn't so empty.