Maybe, but not necessarily even that. The flow of chemical evolution that leads to carbon-based life is just so highly likely. We see some key molecules just about everywhere we look out there. And various simulations (physical, not virtual) create nucleic acids, amino acids, fatty acids, carbohydrates, etc. So there's no reason to think that the Earth is special.
Something I don't get, people say something along those lines -- that with earth-like conditions, blah-blah, earth-like planets, ... then life!
But also experts claim life only arose once on Earth. So, in a place with perfect conditions, the perfect distance from the sun, the perfect atmosphere, perfect trigger, perfect environmental conditions, life only started once! Doesn't that make it so infinitesimally unlikely that even with millions, billions, of planets with the right conditions we still shouldn't expect abiogenesis to occur.
The same arguments that make for extraterrestrial life surely stand against the uniqueness of anything. We know things that are unique. Seems like it's mostly faith based assertion.
Or an anti-faith based assertion. It’s in many ways much more terrifying if we are, in fact, special.
If we are just one of billions of places that life is going strong then we’ll do the best we can but if we don’t survive the eons who cares.
If Earth is the one and only seed of life, then don’t we have an incredible moral imperative not to wreck things here, and if possible to spread life into the darkness?
Being truly alone in the vast dark is a much scarier idea to live with.
Yes, that seems a dubious claim. There's no way to know, except though simulations, how many dead ends there were. What we know is that all existing organisms share basic biochemical features. More or less the same nucleic acids, amino acids, and so on. So other paths arguably got competed out. Or merged, as we know for nuclei, mitochondria and chloroplasts in eukaryotes. Probably also components of bacteria. Flagella, maybe? The whole DNA/RNA/protein thing could well be a kludge.
The especially cool aspect of searching for life elsewhere in the solar system is the possibility that we'll find other variants that dominated.
Honestly, I'm kind of surprised that there are no laws in place in the U.S., even with them being hardcore capitalists, to prevent such a huge monopoly to choose what they don't want to sell on their marketplace simply because in the past few years they've decided to produce products that compete with Apple and Google.
Bezos' goal from 1997 was to be the 'everything store' as it's succinctly put in the biography about Amazon's rise, and they're doing a fine job of that. I have friends and family that purchase just about everything short of groceries on amazon. But what happens when they decide to enter more markets with their own products and cut off other competitors from selling who don't have the clout or leverage of a behemoth like Apple or Google? If Google had not pulled YouTube from their Fire devices it's unlikely they would have let them sell their products once again. Which shouldn't have even had to happen in the first place.
Also, I think this was only in the US because I was checking Amazon UK last week and you were still able to buy chromecasts and Google Home. This is probably because the EU has laws that restricts companies from taking advantage of their monopolised position and pushing competitors out.
I don't think its exactly anti-competitive since you're free to buy an Apple TV from anyone else. This is more about companies with paid for streaming services not allowing each other on their platforms. Often they will restrict each other from selling content on their devices since they offer a competing product. For example, Amazon sells TV shows/movies through Amazon Instant Video, so does Apple through iTunes. In my opinion this was enforcing a similar policy at a more physical level. There's a weird balance to the whole ecosystem.
Google Home is alright, but you definitely can't buy Chromecasts on Amazon UK. Any that you do see there are fakes, with misleadingly similar branding and design.
Which -- given that they clearly allow these obvious knock-offs -- puts paid to Amazon's initial stated reason ("avoid customer confusion") for not allowing Chromecasts on their store.
Amazon does something even more insidious. Apparently if you're selling a cable or something and doing really well, Amazon will come out with a generic version of that which is cheaper, and they will be able to undercut your prices.
Basically, they're letting you validate the market and then jumping in once you've taken the risk and created the market.
This is pretty common in retail and predates Amazon (or even online shopping in general)-- for example, Kroger has Kroger-branded groceries; Best Buy has Dynex, Rocketfish, and Insignia for consumer electronics; Costco has Kirkland Signature everything.
Generics and private label brands are big business, especially in industries where consumers aren't brand sensitive (does anyone actually buy on-brand Motrin or Advil?). It's completely understandable that Amazon would want on that particular gravy train.
> Basically, they're letting you validate the market and then jumping in once you've taken the risk and created the market.
I am not trying to defend Amazon but they also cut down the customer acquisition costs someone validating the market has to incur. So, it is now become a toss up between initial costs of finding and validating the market vs Amazon taking the sales data entering in direct competition. Which is better?
Not every company has access to your sales numbers and revenue on those sales. They know very well how much revenue you're bringing in, it's child's play to them to price out your product and see that if their amazing supply chain network can undercut you while they still make a profit or break even just to increase market share.
Plus, if you're doing "fulfilled by Amazon" they know you're paying an extra 30% on your cost of goods for fulfillment. They can price all that in and figure out if they can sell it for cheaper, also fulfilled by Amazon.
But when you have actual sales numbers and you already know what they're paying for fulfillment (fulfilled by Amazon) you can do way better math.
"He's selling 10k of these a day at 20 bucks, and he's giving us six bucks per sale. Can we sell the same thing at 15 bucks? Then it'll sell better and rank higher in the search results"
I'm failing to see a problem with this. You're literally selling goods in someone else's store. Is it also a problem when grocery stores undercut and prominently feature their own brands?
As it is with most countries in Europe and I think many in Asia as well (correct me if I'm wrong). This is just an example of America's hardcore capitalism where certain markets are dominated by a few key players and the only entity capable of stopping them from enacting these batshit insane anti-consumer tactics are congress who are more than happy to take their bribes whilst shafting the average American consumer.
Does anyone with more expertise in this field know what resources/books there are to learn more about systems and synthetic biology?
Also, what are the dozen or so subfields in biology that may have more relevance than others such as epigenetics, evolutionary bio, comp. bio etc. to engineering biological systems?
One last question, from your perspective, would it be more useful if one were coming from an engineering background to synthetic biology or purely a biology background to synthetic biology whilst learning some basics engineering principles? I'm currently studying physics and mathematics.
I have built a company for designing proteins for use in therapeutic synthetic biology (CRISPR/CAR/SynNotch/etc. systems). My undergrad background was more chemistry/physics/philosophy while my graduate school was in biochemistry/cell-bio, and I think that accidentally set me up well to work in synthetic biology. The books have yet to be written :-)
The rules in synthetic biology are sloppy versions of the rules found in chemistry and physics. The logical/statistical/mechanistic tools of the the more mathematical sciences are extraordinarily useful to have in mind, however you have to get comfortable with a lot fewer 'correct' answers and a lot more unknown or even unknowable variables. Some tools like population level statistics are really useful tool in biology, while complex logically sequential steps used in programming really don't work so well in the wet world of biology. Synthetic biology is very much parallel programming of thousands of 10-line programs, rather than 10, thousand-line programs. To me it seems the hardest part for people who haven't done biological lab work to understand seems to be the intuition for how biological proteins interact with each other, and the scale of their interactions in time and space, both upwards and downwards - relative to the cell itself, as well as the chemistry involved in the cell. That intuition at the 'meso-scale' is uncommon, and building it without actually running experiments in lab is tricky.
It's still a new field, so it's not particularly well-articulated in terms of sub-fields right now. But there are huge differences in terms of whether one is studying prokaryotic systems, single-cell systems, or mammalian systems. Or whether one is manipulating proteins, DNA itself, or biologically compatible materials. Or whether you're building academic sensors, commercial systems, or therapeutics. Though they all involve overlapping ideas, the edges to each system are really pretty different to my mind. Another tricky thing for those without the biological background is to be able to judge whether a synthetic-biology tool is useful in the context of biology (and not just a toy).
What is a cool and useful trick for a digital computer or an physical robot can often be either trivial or impossible in a cell, while engineering a cell to biologically integrate a novel sensor can be an amazing breakthrough. Nano-scale metal gears, robots and antennas with massive energy reserves just don't make sense in the warm, wet, energy-efficient, Brownian world of biology.
iGEM is a great place to start - it's an academic competition for undergraduates - a lot of exploration going on there that is relatively accessible, if a bit unrefined. [1]
Our company, Serotiny, is trying to bring a plain-language understanding to the synthetic design of novel proteins, which are often the payloads and tools of synthetic systems like Cas9 in the article. [2]
Addgene is a non-profit physical repository of many of the genetic 'tools' used, and they have some nice blog-posts and tutorials for beginning scientists. [3]
SynBioBeta is the only real industry group around right now for the field, and they keep pretty well up-to-date with interesting industry news - new companies, new products, new events related to synthetic biology. [4]
Perhaps to a certain degree, but people with imbalanced brain chemistries who are affected by bipolar disorder, personality disorders etc. cannot simply 'think' bad moods away. It's unfortunately more complicated than that.
It's simple, if you want to fly, just fall and miss the ground.
Simple doesn't mean easy.
I used to suffer from severe clinical depression and ultimately the only thing that's helped was to learn how to control my thoughts. It still rears its head when I'm tired, hungry, or drunk enough so I don't have the energy to control my thoughts. Hell, sometimes I just relax too much and forget to and it comes rushing back.
But on the bright side, the need for constant productive output has really helped both my career and my physique. Pros and cons I guess.
Ultimately I find this much more desirable than the antidepressants that just made me numb to everything.
I don't see the parent calling it simple. Thought control isn't simple and is part of strategies like CBT which seem fairly effective in treating people with imbalanced brain chemistries, which is going to be all the people who care about this stuff anyway.
I would incredibly surprised if he hasn't already thought about similar things. I remember in an interview last year he stated that the Interplanetary Transport System SpaceX is building for whisking humans to mars and other celestial objects in the solar system will be tiny in comparison to the spaceships that humanity will build in the latter half of this century. Bear in mind, the ITS has more than 3x the lift-off thrust of the Saturn V, which is the largest rocket ever built.
Actually, it does not. Musk announced recently that the ITS would be a lot smaller, actually being slightly smaller than the Saturn V, as he couldn't get as many subsidies as he expected to.
