Wanted - Home Computers to Join in Research on Artificial Life - NYTimes.com
The ambiguity in the term “synthetic biology” is fascinating. Evelyn Fox Keller points it out as “the conspicuous difference between the production of artificial life and the artificial production of life.” The kind of synthetic biology that I do is closer to the latter definition, changing existing biology in order to do something “useful” (making fuels in my case), and to hopefully learn more about how biology works in general. In my lab we use computer models of cellular processes such as metabolism in order to help inform some of our “design” decisions, something alluded to in the article:
Software simulations that can model evolution could be used by human designers, Mr. Damer argued. “We can’t build cars and airplanes or even toys these days without computer modeling and simulation,” he said. “So why not biochemistry?”
but what do computer models of life mean on their own, without testing the predictions in a real cell, without data from biochemical experiments (no matter how distant from “real” life those may be, but that’s another story)? How does our concept of what life is depend on our unique point of view and how does this affect what we program into our computer models? How is the search for extraterrestrial life tied to the search for the origin of life?
