How far are we from this technology and what can we do to get there?
Forget clunky mechanical robots, Boston Dynamics can just engineer fleshy bullet proof self healing skin system. Think skinned dogs.
Forget clunky mechanical robots, Boston Dynamics can just engineer fleshy bullet proof self healing skin system. Think skinned dogs.
Imagine any natural input that life can read (light, heat, glucose levels, hormone levels, force, etc.) and any natural output that life can produce (temp, colors, fluorescence, electrical impulse, etc.). For many of those options, we can design a novel protein that achieves a linkage between that I/O.
However, our approach to the problem is very much not like AlphaFolds - we don't try to scan the 20^600 space by changing individual amino acids, but rather we don't worry about folding or structure (too much) and instead play around with discreet functional modules that already exist in nature. Our approach is a bit more sociological than it is a simulation of physics/chemistry. But it works.
Optogenetics tools, CARs, SynNotches, BaseEditors are all curious examples, and there are many more coming online right now.
Less long than you think; more funding ;)
I know that's a bit cheeky, but the ability to understand and properly manipulate the chemistry of life (not just the D/RNA coding) is finally coming online. Efforts such as the OP's are along those lines.
Many still do not understand (myself included) how revolutionary CRISPR and other such techniques are. The world of fine-tuned, genetically based, auto-organizing chemistry is within sight. And man, it is going to weird.
Academician Prokhor Zakharov was wrong, we will be able to put an elephant's nose on a giraffe [0].
[0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Alpha_Centauri#U...