Photo: Maurice Mikkers & Jan-Jaap Heine
Andrew Hessel has 10 trillion friends. They taught him everything about life, the universe and everything else. Meet Hessel’s friends: the microbes. They are the perfect friend; as long as they have food they will keep growing. Hessel would like to think about them as chemical computers, with ever-adapting capabilities.
The perception of cells acting as computers is pretty new. People started to understand that the architecture of computing systems and organisms are similar (since these are obviously modules we recognize and then recreate). But now we are learning how to make biology into a programmed sequence. We translate the human genome into digital information, our machines are currently reading DNA codes of any living thing. With genetic info, Moore’s law is not just doubling; we’re getting a tenfold improvement every year.
We are still very naive in understanding the most fundamental thing about human beings – our life.
Synthia – the first man made artificial organism, marked the arrival of many more artificially made organisms. Life has become programmable; we can decide what we want to do with it and put in new functions. This technology will literally change our planet. Now we have to ask ourselves what it is that we want to make? There are limitations right now, the technology is first generation. We can’t stitch large genomes together, and its pretty expensive. For now. But more then that, what can we make and bring to the world safely? This is the real challenge for the development of this technology. We are starting to make new diagnostic tools, drugs, fuels. But now we get to control the environment; how can we grow organisms that can live on the surface of mars? We’re creating carbon nanotubes, probably the strongest photosynthetic computers. Imagine grass that spreads the Internet everywhere it grows. It’s not impossible. Synthetic humans are also a possibility, where does it take us? We have to start thinking about it, exploring it, and educating our children about it. Hessel co-founded the world’s first cooperative biotech company the Pink Army Cooperative, developing a new drug pipeline and bringing researchers, companies and regulators together to create a ‘Cancer Ninja’ army and develop a ‘one drug for one person’ concept. His aim is to crowd-source viruses and give them out for free.
People are scared of synthetic viruses, but viruses are just software. Virus engineering will be the next software engineering. But Hessel’s conclusion is positive: “Mostly I know that we will get through this period, but i believe in human nature… somehow we make the world a better place….we correct mistakes and move on.”
Follow him on Twitter @andrewhessel.
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