Life, Synthetic Life!

6 responses to “Life, Synthetic Life!”

1. 

   rocketmavericks

   Feb 14, 2010 at 7:28 am

   I would be curious as to how the asymmetry is handled. Reactivity should be significantly degraded in a system where the active reaction sites are 180 degrees out of alignment. No way for a right-handedness in molecular alignment can be processed in a left-handed symetry world. Not sure how this benefits reactivity and reduction in activation energy to enable protein synthesis. Would love to understand what George sees that the rest of us do not understand.

   Reply
2. 

   jurvetson

   Feb 14, 2010 at 7:25 pm

   A mirror-image protein may not be broken down by "natural" enzymes, and thus last longer. But it might also not serve other functions as well. It’s a mirror world. So, RM, that’s the whole idea – radical new properties in an evolutionary search space.

   And given the incompatibilities, this may need to be built from the ground up. One of his recent projects was an artificial ribosome.

   Reply
3. 

   jurvetson

   Feb 15, 2010 at 3:08 am

   Just emailed him to verify, and sure enough:

   "A mirror version of a natural peptide or protein therapeutic, like insulin,
   generally would not work at all. But a mirror antibody selected to bind to
   a normal target should work fine and last longer in serum or other natural
   biological contexts. A mirror cell resistant to predators might be helpful
   in converting carbon dioxide to fuels (both of which happen to be unaffected
   by mirror symmetry) in the wild. Most mirror enzymes should be just as
   efficient as current enzymes but only when acting on mirror molecules, which
   can be 10 to 100X more valuable."
   (see arep.med.harvard.edu/pdf/Forster_GR_06.pdf)

   Reply
4. 

   rocketmavericks

   Feb 15, 2010 at 6:08 am

   I can see the anti-body argument, because the receptor would not be stereochemically dependent to handedness, but proteins and enzymes generally have some level of specificity, in activation areas. I will have to read the paper to re-educate myself on this. The concept seems very applicable towards increasing immunity to viral attack of a cell, like one which is engineered to produce synthetic biomaterials such as biodiesel in a non-sterile environment, but applying generally to proteins and enzymatic catalytic systems is still something I don’t understand. Definitely interesting, and definitely food for more discussion on the playa this summer. Maybe George can attend?

   Reply
5. 

   jurvetson

   Oct 7, 2012 at 3:34 pm

   P.S. this photo is used to illustrate DISCOVER

   "George Church is envisioning a package deal: get your genome sequenced, and he and his collaborators will develop a line of induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS) from your tissue, so in the future, you’ll be able upgrade your system with organs and tissues bearing both your genes and special extras like genes from centenarians. It’s combining stem cells with gene therapy.

   I don’t think people have fully appreciated how quickly adult stem cells and sequencing and synthetic biology have progressed. They have progressed by orders of magnitude since we got [induced pluripotent stem cells]"

   Reply
6. 

   jurvetson

   Jun 5, 2014 at 4:30 am

   with spouse…

   Reply