beyond imitating nature
biomaker
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detournement
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urbi et orbi |
Biomaker
Domesticating synthetic biology
by Jakub Kupikowski and Małgorzata Czekajło
Domesticating production
Domestication of plants and animals introduced production of food to surroundings of our homes and often inside it. Cottage industry, first form of industrial production, also took place either at home or in a workshop attached to it. Industrial revolution moved production out of homes into factories and detached it from rural communities and placed within a growing urban population. In postindustrial society, where machines and systems of production become cheap, small and thus ubiquitous, we see redomestification of production, but already reshaped by industrial processes with so called maker movement.
Processing information
Development of postindustrial society is driven by information technology. As Moore's law predicted electronic devices are trillion times smaller and cheaper than they used to be. Personal computers and smartphones together with communication technologies and the internet of things on the horizon, allow to bring work back into our homes.
Prototyping platforms like Arduino or Raspberry Pi turned computer users into makers. Yet they are still dependent on mass-produced components. Initiatives like Open-source Ecology assemble a whole independent system that encompass technologies from harvesting energy and raw materials to producing and fixing machines. But to compete with mass production such a system needs to include precision production systems such as CNC.
Computerized production
Numerically controlled machines allow for production of precise and complex elements designed with CAD tools. Printers, 2d, 3d and 4d printers, milling machines, robotic arms constantly become smaller and more reliable, which makes it easier to make them and use at home.
One of the recent advancements is using living cells to print organs and maybe whole organism in the future. Bioprinting is one of the symptoms of the production paradigm shift towards synthetic biology. However low (compared to natural growth) precision of 3d modeling and printing together with developments in genetics and molecular biology suggests that growing genetically manipulated organisms might be the future of production.
Food processing
There's also a recent trend of miniaturizing food processing systems for home use. Most prominent example being microbrewery movement, which started in the 1970s and has far less to do with advances in beer production technology than with shift in realisation that its possible to brew one's own personalized beer.
Food production
Disappointment with mass produced food inspired return to organic farming. After coops took control of distribution and community gardens introduced farming to our neighbourhood food production enters our homes as miniturized industrial systems, like hydroponics, aquaponics or pink farming.
Farming becomes computerized. New species are domesticated with devices like bioreactors for growing microorganism or systems for seaweed cultivation. Soon we can expect cellular food printers.
What is still beyond reach of home technologies is synthetic biology used in industrial farming. We can plant GMO seed but we are not able to create our own. In the same way we can bioprint only using cells with specific DNA, so we cannot design new types of tissues.
Synthetic biology since 2000 has used engineering processes to design and produce artificial biological systems thanks to advancements in genetic engineering and mathematical modeling. Moore's law applies here as well: miniaturization, cost reduction and automation of its processes allows us to expect home appliances for creation of not only microorganisms, but also plants and animals.
Biomaker
Biomaker (or just maker) is not a trademark. It is a type of appliance, or rather a set of devices similar to a hi-fi or an ATX computer. Word maker distinguishes it from bioprinters.
Biomaker is used to creating organisms in an automated process from programming plasmid to growing a fully functional organism.
Depending on its type and size makers also differ in sizes and types of incubator and accordingly in prizes and applications ranging from bacterial cultures, through house plants and pets to sea mammals and extinct species reconstructions.
Operation
Biomaker is a set of several devices: DNE synthesizer, electoporator and incubator. The first one is reponsible for synthesis of digitally designed oligonucleotides from AGCT nucleotides stored in replacable cartridges (similar to CMYK printer cartridges). The second implants DNA to stem cells retrieved from a container. Zygote enters a growth medium in the last device, where it multiplies and grows in a controlled environment (temperature, pH, nutrients).
Interface
The device is operated through a computer with compatible drivers. Biomaker software suite consists of several components, such as a DNA chain designer cell designer, tissue and organism designer, gene expression simulator, metabolism simulator etc. allowing feedback loop between code and implementation. Organism model data format resembles contemporary BIM (Building Information Model).
Maker's interface combines principles from currently used applications for genetic programming (like Gene Designer) and cell modeling (like Tinker Cell) with CAD programs (like Rhinoceros 3d) and visual programming (like Grasshopper).
Applications
We can imagine a whole range of biomaker's applications. From bacterial cultures used in food production and processing to achieve new flavours and smells, in industry to process matter and reducing waste etc. Through edible and decorative plants or even trees that become houses. To domesticated and wild animals, giant sea mammals or even dinosaurs.
We can imagine following species:
Arbucula silvestris - a crossbreed of blueberry and mycelium. Grows up to two meters high. In shaded and moist place its sporangium produces spores necessary for fungi growth.
Patata trapaeolis - potato tubers grow creeping nasturtium sprouts with edible flowers rich in beta carotene and vitamin C.
Carota lupinis - lupin carrot is farmed for its edible carrot root, lupin leaves used as fodder and lupin seeds used in cosmetic production.
Crustacea plasticum - a crab who can digest synthetic polymers and excrete organic material. They can crush hard plastics with their strong chelipedes. They serve and important role in marine ecosystem cleaning ocean from plastic waste.
Drosera valvis - sundew clam is a trans-species organism. Stems transport nutrients from leaves to clam appendages. Insects caught in sundew traps instead of being digested are slowly surrounded with layers of calcium carbonate and conchiolin. This allows for producing pearls outside water environment.
Canis fertilis - a nesting dog is able to lay edible eggs. Due to its avian genetic traits parts of its body are covered with feathers, which help in egg incubation.
Ethical concerns
Synthetic biology is a morally problematic discipline of biology. Biomaker as a tool concentrating its achievements find itself in the centre of the problem. As any technology it can be use for unethical purposes.
Where is the limit of manipulating nature? What is our responsibility for created organisms? How can we control consequences of our creation?
We imagine positive changes brought by biomaker into our lives as well as dangers and morally ambiguous situations. Biomaker is as much a sign of a "brave new world" as a warning.
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