Dragons
- From: Earl <neptune@xxxxxx>
- Date: 31 Mar 2006 07:48:27 GMT
Here be dragons
Mar 30th 2006
| SAN MELITO
From The Economist print edition
With luck, you may soon be able to buy a mythological pet
PAOLO FRIL, chairman and chief scientific officer of GeneDupe,
based in San Melito, California, is a man with a dream. That
dream is a dragon in every home.
GeneDupe's business is biotech pets. Not for Dr Fril, though,
the mundane cloning of dead moggies and pooches. He plans a
range of entirely new animals?or, rather, of really quite old
animals, with the twist that even when they did exist, it was
only in the imagination.
Making a mythical creature real is not easy. But GeneDupe's team
of biologists and computer scientists reckon they are equal to
the task. Their secret is a new field, which they call ?virtual
cell biology?.
Biology and computing have a lot in common, since both are about
processing information?in one case electronic; in the other,
biochemical. Virtual cell biology aspires to make a software
model of a cell that is accurate in every biochemical detail.
That is possible because all animal cells use the same parts
list?mitochondria for energy processing, the endoplasmic
reticulum for making proteins, Golgi body for protein assembly,
and so on.
Armed with their virtual cell, GeneDupe's scientists can
customise the result so that it belongs to a particular species,
by loading it with a virtual copy of that animal's genome. Then,
if the cell is also loaded with the right virtual molecules, it
will behave like a fertilised egg, and start dividing and
developing?first into an embryo, and ultimately into an adult.
Because this ?growth? is going on in a computer, it happens
fast. Passing from egg to adult in one of GeneDupe's enormous
Mythmaker computers takes less than a minute. And it is here
that Charles Darwin gets a look in. With such a short generation
time, GeneDupe's scientists can add a little evolution to their
products.
Each computer starts with a search image (dragon, unicorn,
gryphon, etc), and the genome of the real animal most closely
resembling it (a lizard for the dragon, a horse for the unicorn
and, most taxingly, the spliced genomes of a lion and an eagle
for the gryphon). The virtual genomes of these real animals are
then tweaked by random electronic mutations. When they have
matured, the virtual adults most closely resembling the targets
are picked and cross-bred, while the others are culled.
Using this rapid evolutionary process, GeneDupe's scientists
have arrived at genomes for a range of mythological creatures?in
a computer, at least. The next stage, on which they are just
embarking, is to do it for real.
This involves synthesising, with actual DNA, the genetic
material that the computer models predict will produce the
mythical creatures. The synthetic DNA is then inserted into a
cell that has had its natural nucleus removed. The result, Dr
Fril and his commercial backers hope, will be a real live
dragon, unicorn or what have you.
Readers with long memories may recall GeneDupe's previous
attempt to break into the pet market, the Real Goldfish (see
article). This animal was genetically engineered to deposit gold
in its skin cells, for that truly million-dollar look.
Unfortunately Dr Fril, a biologist, neglected to think about the
physics involved. The fish, weighed down by one of the heaviest
metals in existence, sank like a stone, as did the project. He
is more confident about his new idea, though. Indeed, if he can
get the dragons' respiration correct, he thinks they will set
the world on fire.
*********
This is an annual production. The last report on the good folks
at GeneDupe was 6 years ago -- to the day.
.
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