Future Ben

I presented a talk to the NYU Biotechnology club today, Metabiotechnology: or Why Biotech Sucks Right Now. Attendance was low but the crowd was more bemused than offended at the title. Often as you put a presentation together your thesis develops. And feedback from your audience is even better for that purpose. Drew and Dusan were particularly helpful but I was surprised at what did and did not resonate.

I will try to post the talk if I can figure out how to get powerpoint into wordpress. Basicly my thesis is that the current hegemony of Biotechnology is Biobusiness. While there is nothing inherently wrong with a free market the system is monolithic and there are huge needs that are very poorly served. The most prevalent being the needs of developing nations.

As I was preparing and during the presentation I realized that it was worse than that. The science supporting Biotechnology is often undermined by profit motivation. My case study on this was the “Green Revolution.” Initially plant breeding and ecological management through pesticides and herbicides seemed like a good idea. It has become pretty clear in the past 20 years that this is not the case and that there are much more sound and sustainable practices. Yet people with access to all of the data pointing to the failings of previous generation technology continue use ultimately damaging methods. In fact they have subjugated Biotechnology to continue even farther down this destructive path. (Hence the subtitle.)

So the evils of greedy corporations aren’t all that new, as several people pointed out. But what surprised me was the audience response to my proposal. If Biotechnology is currently monolithic and profit motivated then the weaknesses of that system opens up the possibility of Biotechnology that is dynamic and either need, OR profit motivated.

Maybe I didn’t express that clearly enough, but I got a lot of knee jerk capitalism. “Technology has to have a product,” or “that system works a lot better than government funding.” Both true statements, but not in anyway an argument against need motivated Biotech. And I acknowledge that there are government grants to encourage people to develop need based technologies, but there has to be something more, something new.

I am glad I used the agriculture case study because the great weakness of current agriculture is that it is monoculture based. And that is exactly the problem with Biotechnology and Big Pharma. Sure there are a lot of little Biotech companies, but they are all playing the same game. Especially since they all presumably follow the FDA rulebook. A true disruptive Biotechnology would bypass this whole system. Is paradigm shift old enough to be retro? It sounds stupid, but there were very intelligent people in the audience who couldn’t imagine that there could be an alternative to our current system.

If you equate it to other paradigms, Biotechnology is ready for it’s own version of the personal computer, model T, cotton gin. I think sequencing was the equivalent to the printing press or early computer. Biotech is fortunate in that it can take all of the lessons from the electronic and information technology fields. Open source, distributed systems and other meta-technologies. The question is, what will that technology be? If history is any teacher we won’t know until it becomes pervasive.

I try not to repost boing boing material, but sometimes it’s to topical to pass up. Wired contributer Quinn Norton has posted her slides from her talk on Body Hacking. Body Hacking is admittedly just a catchphase that doesn’t really capture the embryonic state of post humanism we live in, but I can’t think of anything better so OK. So what makes body hacking different from piercings and tattoos? Ms. Norton makes the point that body hacking goes beyond the aesthetic and into enhanced functionality.

Already Lasik and ligament replacement surgeries are being used for enhacement in sports, and drugs like Provigil Aderol and Xanex enjoy vivrant trade on the black market. So what is the future of body hacking?
I would guess that surgical enhancements will grow as quickly as creative drug use and biological theraputics like viral gene transfer. I am waiting for somebody to use the Adenoviral treatment for CF on themselves to enhance their breathing capacity. I doubt it would do anything, but I still hope they try.

I have been appointed the task of naming my first foray into synthetic biology/ protein engineering. I have never invented anything substatial enough to name before so I am having some trouble.

The protein is a new reporter for MRI. It binds paramagnetic Manganese and it creates a brighter signal than background tissues when imaged properly. What the hell do you call something like that?

My coleague and friend Yousef had this to say.

your construct could
termed as MP’s standing for either “magnetic protein”, “manganese protein”,
“metal protein”, “MRI protein” (a lot to stand for) to parallel the FP field
(fluorescent protein). Since there is no color such as in GFP and RFP
etc….Your enhanced MP (EMP) are reduced to 2 tone: darkening (DMP)and
brightening (BMP)proteins. In DMPs Ferritin would be one of them and in BMPs
yours would fall in this category…

BMP? I’m not sure it has pizzaz. Although I agree that an acronym would be appropriate. How about Manganese Enhaced Magnetic Resonance Imaging Protein? MEMRIP. Maybe MRI can be collapsed and I could just call it MEMP. If I did and Iron one it would be FEMP.

I have to figure this out before starting the patent.

I said we were going to Boston first, but the future starts here in New Yok. This spring will be the groundbreaking of a project to create nearly 1 million square feet of Biotechnology lab space in NY right next to the NYU med center. Apparently they hemmed and hawed about it for years and then Guiliani got cancer and suddenly became very interested in Biomedical sciences. (Funny how that works.) NYU had tried to get the project rolling, but had only managed to get the area rezoned before NYC took the project away from them. Now it looks like it is acutally going to happen.
In addition to providing labspace at rates competitive to Boston, SF and La Lloya, the city is also putting together a sizable investment fund for startups. Hopefully this is the kickstart that NYC needs to catch up to other areas in Biotech. I didn’t plan on staying in New York after grad school, but this might be an opportunity that I should stick around for.

It’s true. I am now a master of science. I am looking at the results of my qualifying exam and it indubitably says, “pass.” Actually the oral exam was eerily smooth. There were a few conversational questions by my board, but other than that they just listened quitely, deliberated for 5 minutes, then brought me back in and said, “congratulations.” I thought I was going to sweat it out for 3 hours under a barrage of impossible questions. I was done in an hour and a half!

I feel strangely disapointed. With an impending sense that the other shoe is going to drop in the next few months. Transgenic mice are notoriously frustrating. But I must tiumph, for the future.

Continuing our dismemberment madness:

In china a man: 1. loses his penis in an accident. 2. gets a BRAND NEW penis from a brain dead man 22 years younger than him. 3. After no complications or tissue rejection demands to have his new penis removed because of psychological trauma and its… (are you ready?) swollen shape. Clearly this man is not ready for the post human era.

It gets me thinking though. What are they doing with the dismembered penis? Can I have it? Despite turning 30 I still have functioning genitalia. (At least I’d like to think so.) But why limit yourself? If there is a spare swollen 22 year old’s penis just floating around why should it go to waste? If that poor bastard would rather go through life without a penis just because he didn’t grow it himself then I will gladly go double barrell. It would take me a step beyond post human artist Orlan and make me the poster child for post humaninsm! I don’t know where you could hang that particular poster though.

Yeah, so apparently a huge problem in Africa is that women aren’t producing enough babies for their husbands. You see in many parts of Africa a woman’s entire worth is based on her ability to produce children for men. A woman who reproduce “is worse than a dog.” What could be the answer to this grave social ill? In Vitro Fertilization of course! God forbid we address the issue of the blatant sexism that lets men think its OK to throw their wives onto the street for not producing children. Or maybe the rampant venereal diseases that are left untreated and cause infertilty. Unfortunatel nobody ever made any money promoting social elightenment or public health so the answer is of course to provide affordable IVF for the third world.

How can a world be so ass backward? Where a woman is mutilated at birth, has no access to or knowledge of contraceptives, no treatment for subsequent diseases, and after all of that, despite being the infertile member of a couple only 60% of the time is driven into the street when no babies come from the indentured rape that so often is marriage.

When I grow up I’m moving to Africa to marry a bunch of beautiful but recently divorced ladies and open a university for women. It will be a school with only three majors. Public Health, In Vitro Fertilization and Lesbian Studies.

I have been getting buried under my project lately, but I wanted to quickly present Caltec’s Biological Imaging Center. The center, headed by Scott Fraser. The imaging part is interesting enough, but what fascinates me is how this group pioneers new ways of seeing.

I first learned of the center at a ASCII meeting here in New York. David Kremers is (or was) an artist in residence there. He presented several projects the center was working on. Namely showing more than 3 dimensions of data in a single image. At the time it made less sense to me, but now that I am working with MRI I understand much better the need to present a huge amount of information in a single image. Take the time to check out the center website, and Scott Fraser’s labpage.

Rollover to turn the light off

The Nagy lab has been making very impressive GFP mice for years. They focus on using transgenic mice and embryonic stem cells to better understand development and genetic disease. Check out the massive library of flurorescent mice made by the Nagy Lab and their colleagues. Each one uses an inducible promoter to permanently activate the fluorescent marker. Very handy. If you have library access, pull Dr. Nagy’s latest review article in Development 2005 Dec;132(23):5130-2.

I don’t like Edwardo Kac’s work. I don’t even respect what he does. His art preys upon an audiences ignorance about biotechnology. I couldn’t stop laughing at one ASCI meeting when artist Joe Davis started shouting out “Alba was photoshopped! The emperor has no clothes!” I don’t know if that is really true, but it caused the speaker to retreat into stammering artistic doublespeak for the rest of the presentation. Alba, the GFP bunny is not really Edwardo Kac’s creation. He credits several scientists for providing “assistence.” Ha! Sure, it’s his rabbbit, but there is no mention of the process of creating the animal. Why is that? He doesn’t want you to know. Look up the process of making a transgenic it is dull and arduous and involves the sacrafice of dozens of animals. Most people today simply hand their gene over to a facility where a technitions do all of the work. “Genesis” is another great example. There are bacteria on a plate. There are all these G’s and C’s and A’s and T’s. There is even a bible quote. Whoopdie freakin doo! The weakness of Kac’s work, and what totally pisses me off, is that he could say just about anything and people would buy it. I understand the pop art aspect of it, but this isn’t a can of tomato soup. The science as mysticism mentality he inspires in an audience is the most dangerous form of sensationalism and is ultimately meaningless. Anyway, he wrote a book. Go thumb through it at the bookstore.