Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves 1st Edition by George M Church (PDF)

Description

A Harvard biologist and master inventor explores how new biotechnologies will enable us to bring species back from the dead, unlock vast supplies of renewable energy, and extend human life. In Regenesis, George Church and science writer Ed Regis explore the possibilities of the emerging field of synthetic biology. Synthetic biology, in which living organisms are selectively altered by modifying substantial portions of their genomes, allows for the creation of entirely new species of organisms. These technologies-far from the out-of-control nightmare depicted in science fiction-have the power to improve human and animal health, increase our intelligence, enhance our memory, and even extend our life span. A breathtaking look at the potential of this world-changing technology, Regenesis is nothing less than a guide to the future of life.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐*A full executive summary of this book is available here:

⭐DNA was only discovered about a century ago, and its structure remained a mystery until about half a century ago, but since this time our knowledge and understanding of DNA has grown immensely (indeed exponentially). What’s more, this understanding has evolved to include not just an understanding of how DNA works, but also how it can be manipulated to help advance our ends. The most glaring example here is the phenomenon of genetically modified food. Though not without controversy initially (and some fringe opposition that lives on to this day), it is fair to say that genetically modified food was one of the major scientific advances of the 20th century. Over and above this, our understanding of DNA appeared to reach its most impressive manifestation with the successful sequencing of the human genome in the year 2000.For the genetics professor and pioneering genetic engineer George Church, however, genetically modified food and the Human Genome Project are but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential of genomics. Indeed, since the year 2005, the exponential growth rate in our ability to read and write DNA has increased from 1.5-fold per year (a rate that matches Moore’s law), to the incredible rate of 10-fold per year (p. 243). This explosion in scientific and technological progress has resulted in dramatic advancements in the areas of biochemicals, biomaterials, biofuels and biomedicine. What’s more, advancements in these technologies are but in their incipient stage, and the future of genomics promises to dwarf these initial achievements. In his new book ‘Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves’ George Church takes us through the developments that have occurred recently in the area of genomics, and also where these developments are likely to take us in the future.When it comes to the current state of the field, manipulating DNA has already allowed us to produce organisms with new features, such as foodstuffs with novel properties, greater productivity and nutritional value, and resistance to pathogens. Over and above this, micro-species have been programmed to do such things as detect impurities in drinking water, produce electricity from waste-water (and purify the waste-water in the process), produce blood, produce vaccines, take pictures, and even store information. Indeed, the potential to use DNA as a store of information is already recognized to be the likely next leap in computer science, and is poised to initiate a revolution in informatics (just imagine storing all of the information in Wikipedia [in every language] on a chip the size of a blood cell, for a cost of $1 for 100,000 copies [p. 197]).And, of course, the potential to manipulate genomes does not end with other species: it can also be extended to our own. Actualizing this potential is not far off, and includes such things as increasing intelligence, gaining full immunity to any pathogen (real or hypothetical), and dramatically extending the lifespan (if not removing mortality altogether).In addition to manipulating genomes for the purpose of creating new biological features, the productive capacity of the genome can also be exploited to produce new substances and materials, such as chemicals, plastics, fuels, drugs, and vaccines. Successes in each of these areas has already been achieved, and the field is on the cusp of scaling-up these processes to an industrial scale. What’s more, manipulating genes shows the promise of expanding the current repertoire of the building blocks of substances and materials to produce a whole new array thereof.Church’s book both is both invigorating and inspiring. However, it should be noted that the book is fairly technical throughout, and will only be easily-digested by a reader who already has a fairly deep understanding of the field. Having said that, an educated general reader equipped with a good amount of patience will have no trouble following the argument, and should learn a great deal in the process. A full executive summary of the book is available here:

⭐A bit of a dense book (which is why I gave it only 4 stars). But if you read it through, a world will open for you. The book is about synthetic genetics — how the advances that are happening right now, but especially in the decades to come, will change the world and blow your mind. There is a lot in this book. But I would like to just talk about my favorite part — the iGEM competition. iGEM is an international student competition for genetic engineering. As Church says [referring to the year 2005], “Undergrads were now doing things, largely in a spirit of fun, that professional molecular biologists would have been hard-pressed to achieve a mere ten years earlier.” In the 2007 competition, the team from UC Berkeley engineered E. coli to produce a blood substitute that could be freeze-dried and stored, and then could be reconstituted and grown up in large volumes when needed. In 2008, the grand prize winner was a Slovenian team from the University of Ljubljana which created a synthetic vaccine for the bacteria that causes stomach ulcers. In 2006, the same Slovenian team had presented an idea for preventing infection of human cells by HIV. In 2010 the competition had grown from the original four teams (in 2005) to 130 teams from all over the world: Asia (38), Europe (38), the US (37), Canada (10), Latin America (4) and Africa (1). The ideas presented by these student teams were amazing, inspiring, brilliant. A team from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne aimed to stop malaria propagation by acting on the vector, that is, the mosquito itself, by coaxing the bacterium that naturally lives in the mosquito’s gut to express an immunotoxin that can prevent the malarial agent from infecting the mosquito, thereby eliminating transmission of the parasite to humans. A team from Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain had a plan to change the climate of Mars (yes, the planet) by building an engineered yeast, resistant to temperature changes and able to produce a dark pigment which will be responsible for a global temperature increase.(They received a gold prize for their efforts). A team from the University of Washington in Seattle were attempting to synthesize antibiotics, starting with Anthrax for the competition. In my view, this is an idea of staggering proportions given the current crisis in antibiotic resistance. (This same same team went on to win the North American competition the following year for engineering E. coli to produce both diesel fuel and an enzyme to break down gluten in the digestive tract.) Also receiving a gold prize was a team from the Chinese University of Hong Kong for creating a living data storage system. Apparently, you no longer need to rely exclusively on micro-chips anymore to store an absurd amount of data in a small space. And the big winner was once again the team from Slovenia for coming up with an “assembly-line” molecule for DNA engineering. I don’t pretend to fully understand it, but Church likens it to the moment in the industrial revolution when standardized nuts and bolts, machine-tools and assembly-line production systems were introduced. There was a time when to build a machine you had to build everything basically from scratch, custom made and hand-tooled. But around the turn of the 18th century a wave of standardized machinery became the norm, accelerating the process of invention and industrialization exponentially. Apparently, the judges thought the “assembly-line” molecule was potentially at that level of importance. Church’s larger point here is that we are on the cusp of assembly-line genetic engineering. Expect an explosion in innovation.

⭐Excellent book; pretty detailed but also pretty readable; lots of interesting and new ideas; quite a few interesting side remarks that then made me go and dig more deeply on the net. It covers lots of detail about the biology/chemistry and also has sections on the history of the industry.

⭐Given how fascinating the subject matter is, this book did not engage me as a reader.

⭐Fantastic book. Highly recommend it.Small problem with the quality of the book but the seller helped very quickly.

⭐excellent

⭐Un libro davvero interessante, soprattutto i primi sei capitoli, dopo si diluisce un po’ e il livello scema non poco. Il testo non è sempre del tutto accessibile, ma niente di terribile e vale comunque la pena di essere letto. Non apprezzabili alcuni cenni di politica, se li poteva risparmiare. Da confrontare con “Origins: The Scientific Story of Creation” e “The Vital Question”, pure notevoli, sopratutto quest’ultimo, un po’ più divulgativo.

⭐

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