I read the article and had the same thought you did.  But I also thought of
the possibility of not only programming the genomes but interfacing the
genomes to real computers which are them programmed to make them do
something.  Sort of like we use uChip's IDE today to program their cpus to
do something useful.  I can envision a whole group of manufacturers out
there mass producing generic genomes that you can them purchase a few to
program and do whatever it is you need them to do, say a fungus that attacks
the pests that destroy orange crops in Florida.  How cool would that be?
And it'd be green tech too!  There's also the dark side of it, where one
could purchase a few genomes and program them to do some real damage to
large groups of the population, sort of like "green bioterrorism".

-Mario


-----Original Message-----
From: piclist-bounces@mit.edu [mailto:piclist-bounces@mit.edu] On Behalf Of
Matthew Miller
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2008 6:41 AM
To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public.
Subject: Re: [EE]:: Scientists Build First Man-Made Genome; Synthetic Life
Comes Next


It's likely that in a decade or two (who knows, maybe sooner) that biology
will be a growing, in demand field in about the same way computer science
is/was. I think that it's pretty cool to think about programming genomes
instead of computers. My advice to new freshman: major in biology and minor
in CS. :)

Matt




-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist