Comment by stultissimus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stultissimus | Hacker News Reader

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Synthetic biologist here. This is a good answer, but looking at man-made genetic programs can give us a simplified perspective. We've made significant progress engineering programs that enable human T cells to kill target (cancer) cells _conditionally_ based on their surface marker expression [1]. This is in contrast to conventional CAR-T cells which are already on the market (see Kymriah, etc.). A simple AND gate T cell circuit is currently being tested in humans [2].

Numerous strategies now exist to write cellular decision making programs using synthetic circuits. We are entering an era where we can write DNA programs and put them into people; I wonder how we can interest more CS-minded people in this kind of "synthetic biology as programming", especially as we move from proof of concept studies in bacteria to real trials in humans [2].

[1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33243890/ [2]: https://arsenalbio.com/2023/05/16/arsenalbio-announces-prese...

Any tips or "get your foot in the door" advice on how someone currently in a CS career, but interested in biology could make this career transition? As a simple CS-minded person, I don't see any LeetCode for synthetic biology sites :)

Reading life science textbooks and substacks is a great way to get started (see [1], [2]).

Also, there is a major deficit of software engineering talent in biology research (probably because pro SWEs are too expensive for academic labs, and those labs are where much of the foundational research is done). If you have the bandwidth, part time / volunteer work with an academic lab in your area could be a great way in the door.

[1] https://centuryofbio.com/

[2] https://substack.com/profile/11154869-niko-mccarty

I was hoping someone who knows more that me to correct/expand my comment. Thanks

Sounds exciting, but also a little scary.

I'm imagining a biological variant of eg. Verilog or VHDL, as this seems like the kind of domain where tools that allow for formal verification would be highly desirable.

This has actually been done for genetic circuits in E coli (bacteria) by Chris Voight's lab at MIT. Their platform is called Cello [1], and it enables interoperation between Verilog/HDL and genetic code. This kind of thing has not yet reached practical utility in human cell engineering, but companies like Asimov [2] are pushing hard in that direction

[1] https://www.cidarlab.org/cello

[2] https://www.asimov.com/

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