I am as big a supporter and believer in the importance of genetic engineering and synthetic biology, and even more so of the importance, potential and near term availability of personal sequencing, but sometimes I think we get ahead of ourselves.
…Genetic engineering is now at a point where computer science was around the mid-eighties. The early PCs were limited as to purpose and network. In two and a half decades, the computer has led us into a digial world in which every aspect of lives has been affected. According to Moore’s Law, the performance of computers doubles every 18 months. Genetic engineering is following a similar growth.
That blurb is from an article in Edge about The Walkman of Genetic Engineering. The computer is a terrible analogy. Even in the mid 80’s you could play around with computers in your living room, as teenagers hack out code. The level of expertise, technical understanding and complexity required to manipulate genomes is orders of magnitude beyond that and for good reason. Computing is ubiquitous. Genetic manipulation and sequencing might become available easily and inexpensively some day, but they will never be commodities like a computer, so let’s just slow down on the analogies.
Synthetic Biology and getting ahead of ourselves
I am as big a supporter and believer in the importance of genetic engineering and synthetic biology, and even more so of the importance, potential and near term availability of personal sequencing, but sometimes I think we get ahead of ourselves.
That blurb is from an article in Edge about The Walkman of Genetic Engineering. The computer is a terrible analogy. Even in the mid 80’s you could play around with computers in your living room, as teenagers hack out code. The level of expertise, technical understanding and complexity required to manipulate genomes is orders of magnitude beyond that and for good reason. Computing is ubiquitous. Genetic manipulation and sequencing might become available easily and inexpensively some day, but they will never be commodities like a computer, so let’s just slow down on the analogies.
Related articles by Zemanta