How Open Source Biology will supercede Darwinian biology
Freeman Dyson has a thought provoking essay in the New York Review of Books, about the Future of Biology. It’s second section, citing the work of biologist Carl Woese, predicts a return to the pre-Darwinian era of horizontal gene transfer and widespread human hacking of species.
Here’s a constructed citation from the Slashdot summary:
“[We can speculate about] a golden age… when horizontal gene transfer was universal and separate species did not yet exist. Life was then a community of cells of various kinds, sharing their genetic information… Evolution could be rapid… But then, one evil day, a cell resembling a primitive bacterium happened to find itself one jump ahead of its neighbors in efficiency. That cell, anticipating Bill Gates by three billion years, separated itself from the community and refused to share… [But] now, as Homo sapiens domesticates the new biotechnology, we are reviving the ancient… practice of horizontal gene transfer, moving genes easily from microbes to plants and animals, blurring the boundaries between species. We are moving rapidly into the post-Darwinian era, when… the rules of Open Source sharing will be extended from the exchange of software to the exchange of genes. Then the evolution of life will once again be communal, as it was in the good old days before separate species and intellectual property were invented.”
July 10th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
This is an incredibly rich area of knowledge that is opening up. The significance of which people are only beginning to grasp. It is incredible fuel for the imagination. If there is a need for an open-source approach in any key science, genetics is it. This article has a very positive outlook, though I find the the prospect of enclosure and privatisation of this knowledge daunting. Are there any real efforts being made towards an Open Source Genetics?
July 10th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Seemingly there is -
An good article discussing how open source methodologies and licensing might apply to biotech – www.gene-watch.org/genewatch/articles/18-1Hope.html
Public Domain Genome Mapping – www.hapmap.org/
Open Access Biotech Toolkits – www.cambia.org
And if you really want to get your teeth into it here’s a 266 page PhD on Open Source Biotechnology by Janet Elizabeth Hope.
opensource.mit.edu/papers/hope.pdf
August 19th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
[...] This post was essentially a comment and response to – blog.p2pfoundation.net/how-open-source-biology-will-supercede-darwinian-biology/2007/07/09 [...]
August 19th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Hi,
Regarding this topic, I have a collection of Open Source Resources (non-software) including Science and Education.
Guy