Comment by deisteve | Hacker News Reader

Comment by deisteve | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

i studied molecular biology and i couldn't help contain my excitement when it was able to bind to another protein. I dont think HN realizes how huge this is. With this level of accuracy, not only can we understand the full mysteries of ourselves but literally any biological entity.

With that level of understanding, its easy to fabricate special medicines that target specific biochem pathways, but more exciting is that we can literally "code in 3d world". We'll be able to print and grow organs in mass. We'll be able to design structures that will bind to target proteins responsible for certain traits. The potential boon to human medicine will be enormous.

I got like goosebumps after watching that video because I understood the implications of being able to predict folds and now generate proteins that will bind to any protein we choose!!!!

We just might have discovered a panacea of sorts and Demis and his team should receive the Nobel Prize.

I'm just ecstatic that we'll see so much drastic improvement in human medicine and importantly how accessible they will be with this new discovery.

> We'll be able to print and grow organs in mass.

I'm a PhD candidate doing my thesis work on stem cell models and tissue engineering for organ transplant...I think this technology is certainly a large leap forward but I think you are a little overzealous with this claim.

Engineering biology is much much harder than simply knowing approximately how to fold proteins. Obviously folding proteins is an important first step.

Arc Institute and others are already looking at whole cell models, i.e. systems biology. It's a totally different level of abstraction.

How do you feel about the potential bioterrorism alternate angle of this capability?

it would be like committing terrorism using silicon wafers

you would have to infiltrate an extremely guarded facility

you would somehow have to bypass QA

its not like somebody on the assembly line for a new protein drug sprinkles a dose of PCP

one potential dual use could be somebody modifying a popular fruit with birds and then droppin seeds at the local organic farm fair

and then when those seeds are consumed by birds they produce poop dangerous for other animals to consume

you could absolutely screw around with the ecosystem, like whoever has access to this programmable "bio-wafer" will be able to play god totally undetected.

the problem is that "bio-wafer" manufacturing process will be very tough and regulated like the CNC machines used to manufacture jet engines depriving certain countries from being able to churn out their own jet engines

Its not regulated if a government does it.

If you haven't heard the phrase "utility-scale molecular sensing" or given it any thought, please prepare to update every opinion you might have about bioterrorism, and ask Keltar how the MR1 is our greatest plausible non-authoritarian line of defense. www.molecularreality.com Keltar is the little green guy in the upper left.

Oh and don't get an account it's broken right now, I'm building the site and hardly anyone has been there yet and the Auth0 is fucked up. But just give your email to Keltar if you wanna followup.

LMAO this is some low effort LLM

How could you say that when you didn't chat with it at all?

I don't see it as much different from what we have today.

Nowadays I am pretty sure that a bad actor with enough money get their hands on strains of really bad stuff since many labs created those to do research. With enough $$$ I bet you can get their hands on them and then release them.

Perhaps, the only difference I see is that it could give you the possibility to (at least in the beginning) to somewhat target the spread. However, given enough mutations it is very likely you go back to an uncontrolled pandemic and so there is no difference from what someone could achieve today.

Additionally, IMHO, getting the blueprint in how to build your protein and then make it so that existing virus/bacteria can produce it, carry it, ... sounds harder and costlier than bribing someone to get something out of said labs.

There are already easier ways to do bioterrorism if you are thinking a virus that kills a lot of people.

> With that level of understanding, its easy to fabricate special medicines that target specific biochem pathways

The problem is to find the right target or pathway in the first place. Just go to opentargets.org. There are lots of potential targets by different metrics but for many diseases we haven't identified that single target that let's us improve the life of say, 20% of patients, for disease X.

Let’s see a real drug coming out of this then we can talk

In 2035 everybody can live forever.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com