Leap in DNA synthesis slashes time to build new genetic sequences
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
It's hard to quantify the impact of new foundational tools like this at launch. Most of the time it falls flat, but even the successes are difficult. For example, CRISPR has led to interesting experiments and treatments on the way, but the effect does feel muted compared to the initial predictions. But there are many other related techniques that can be pulled out of this original research (e.g. dCas9 which lets you operate without cutting).
Similar story with cellular reprogramming.
Eventually one of these things will surface that will be GPU/transistor type innovations.
Yeah, it feels like we need a phase transition in the speed and practicality of the process. But I don't believe we need a single concrete lab tech.
Years ago when I did research, my impression was that there was complexity galore. A researcher on Drosophila developmental signaling would have a very disjoint knowledge domain than that of a researcher in horizontal gene transfer and antibiotic resistance. Both would exist in a different planet altogether than a clinician prescribing a cancer treatment. And the three of them would generally lack the tooling that somebody doing systems biology was used to.
So, to me, the key thing we need is some sort of "domain cement", or a good way to pull operative knowledge and usable skills from everywhere.
Isn't that what LLMs are shaping up to be? Once we manage to divorce the knowledge from the weights in some way we could have in effect a frontier model whose awareness was limited to the sum total of the scientific literature.
Why do you think that?
But there are a lot of analogies to computation in bio as a physical, atomic forces-driven, massively parallel computer, so it's possible there will be something related to electronics and computers that falls out. For example, there's also applications directly related to other fields including DNA storage of data and neuron-based computation.
Biology has had many of these over the centuries.
> But there are a lot of analogies to computation
People have been saying this since pretty much the start of computation and I don't think anything's ever come of it.
The answer I got was along the lines that they were simply going to get around to do the actual lab work at some point.
DNA synthesis technology hasn't really been a blocker for generative bio projects except at the full chromosome level.
And I think simply generating a full chromosome and booting it up without doing due diligence is probably a recipe for disaster.
We honestly aren't that far away from AI slop enzymes, AI slop ligases, and eventually AI slop bio weapons...
Never mind artificial genomes - let me have a snapshot of my DNA sequenced and re-created from scratch say 20 years later - telomeres and all.
If you're talking about Twist's gene fragment product, they advertise that as maxing out at 5 kb. Most, if not essentially all, of that month delivery time is likely the combination, not the oligo pool production. I think the Sidewinder people are actually using Twist pools; they're doing up to 12.5 kb.
By comparison, we recently needed something in the 20 kb range, with a not-so-great sequence, and it was a multi-month process to have a company produce it.
We're speaking about gene synthesis, not about DNA sequencing
are the limits on not-so-greatness for sidewinder known?
But there are many use cases - you can see them described on vendors’ pages and even in this new post.
So... is the "Generative AI" tie in (Mentioned many times, starting at the top of the article) used mainly get funding and press? The core part of this seems to have nothing to do with AI. I am sus this is bullshit marketing based on #1: How many times I've clicked an article, and have AI blasted all over it for sus reasons, and #2: Being able to cheaply and reliably synthesis custom DNA seqs longer than a few hundred/thousand bps is a broadly useful tech for current and future applications.
So: #1: This is really good news. #2: Do better with the hype/bull. It undermines your credibility. So now I start questioning whether this works as well as advertised, and what else they are being shady about.
I broadly agree with you on the AI hyping. Data quality and quantity is not high enough in my opinion.
Erm ... you have A T C G. You can have a gazillion of combinations there.
Of course BY DEFAULT it will always be slower than ANY combination you would desire to have - and you most definitely do not need AI slop to have that either. Do we need AI slop for generating any permutation of those 4 letters now? So what is the point of stating "can construct".
IF the synthesis method works, then that is the focus to be debated, not the AI slop is our master-thinker now.
> “We really want this to be an enabling platform,” says Robinson. “We want people to do cool things with the technology.”
And I think they patented this (if it really works), so ... enabling platform, right.
Interestingly the article omits many key questions to be asked here. If the method already works as-is, why isn't everyone using it? If it is cheaper and faster, then logically it would already be used or usable.
> Erm ... you have A T C G. You can have a gazillion of combinations there.
> Of course BY DEFAULT it will always be slower than ANY combination you would desire to have - and you most definitely do not need AI slop to have that either. Do we need AI slop for generating any permutation of those 4 letters now? So what is the point of stating "can construct".
The bit right before your quote says why:
giving scientists a fast, affordable, and accurate way to physically build the novel genetic sequences that predictive models are now producing faster than anyone can construct them.