Regenesis (43 page)

Yet another viewpoint emerges from a play on the word “singular” As I have argued throughout this book, the future promises to be replete with diversity. Perhaps before we get to a singular state driven by greedy attention to the bottom line of productivity and ever faster thoughts, we might redefine our goals in terms of multiplicity. The counterpoint to singularity is multiarity. The alternative to fast food is the slow food movement. Perhaps we will find ways to construct and study multiverses—multiple parallel universes. We can finally not just ask “What if?” but get answers by
means of diverse experiments. And we may see advantages of exploring this diversity at some intrinsic physical rate rather than following an ever accelerating exponential rate curve as championed in the singularity view.

As a modest step toward these possible futures, we need to get at least some of our genomes and cultures off of this planet or trillions of person-years of work will be lost. We cannot assume that there is anyone at the other end to receive our radio broadcasts—or to replace us if we die. We probably won't wait until computer intelligence is as compact and flexible as biointelligence is already. The only working nanotechnology right now is bionanotechnology, and we cannot confidently predict when this will change. So we need to shoot our SCHPON (sulfur, carbon, hydrogen, phosphorus, oxygen, and nitrogen, “spawn”) into the void. Probably few will survive. The term panspermia, from the Greek for “all seed” (slightly more gender neutral than it first sounds), refers to the theory that life on earth emerged from cells sent from space. Panspermia doesn't really solve the origin of life problem, but could nevertheless be part of our history eventually. In other words, we will be seeding outer space with ourselves or our descendents.

This effort to colonize the universe will benefit from engineering radiation resistance, low gravity resistance, and other such properties into our genome. If we were to convert all carbon currently in biomass into humans plus renewable food, then we could have 1,000 times as many humans as we have now (or an equivalent number of cells to send out). Adding the whole atmosphere doesn't change this much since carbon (as CO
₂
) is only 0.04 percent of the atmosphere. Mining the earth's crust could give another factor of 10,000 (probably limited by nitrogen), or 10
¹⁷
humans. The total solar energy of 10
¹⁷
watts striking earth could conceivably support 10
¹⁴
humans at 100 W each (with up to 90 percent left over). This gives us a population density of 100,000 per sq km of total land, thirty times the current maximally dense city (Mumbai) at 30,000 per sq km. The remaining factor of 1,000 in excess biomass, which while unsustainable on earth,
might be compatible with moving such mass to escape orbit at 3 GJ per 50 kg (person equivalent) over a roughly 1,000-year period (assuming a biomass doubling time of one year, rather than the current 40 year human population doubling time)—or even less time if solar energy outside our planet were harnessed.

These are not recommendations, since we imagine uncertainties and unintended consequences galore, but these numbers do provide a crucial perspective on future prospects and possibilities. As we go forward, survival reasoning may discover the optimal balance between the high diversity and intelligence of a large population versus the challenges of sustainability.

But as we go into some combination of outer and inner space, ourselves a combination of carbon and silicon-based life, we still have questions pertaining to the manner in which we will pursue our explorations. Will we be a well-stirred homogenous “optimal” monoculture, or will we be a cacophonous anarchy of self-experiments—or something in between? Why and how will we teach our robotic or H+ descendants about emotions or morality?

Which brings us back to the question, What
should
we do? What should
they
do? Hopefully this story gives you more than broad strokes and hazy crystal ball gazing—but instead lays out a recipe (a genome) for a bold recoding of nature that emphasizes diversity and safety.

GEORGE CHURCH

Regenesis
would have been hard for Ed Regis or me to have written separately, so we've tried to share the work, credit, and blame. We hope to develop sequels, movies, smartphone apps, and action figures. So if we've inadvertently omitted someone you admire and you'd like to secure a place in history for that someone and/or yourself, please let us know, and we'll try to re-reroute the rivers Alpheus and Peneus to include your nominees in our next labors.

I'd like to acknowledge my coworkers, family, and associates, especially Ting Wu and John Aach, who have helped in innumerable ways since 1978 and 1995, respectively, including (but not limited to) safety, public outreach, ethics, and brilliant theoretical and experimental insights. My 1984 PhD thesis acknowledged 258 people (
arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/ackk.html
), and that list remains relevant—especially my high school, college, grad school, and postdoc mentors, Crayton Bedford, Sung-Hou Kim, Wally Gilbert, and Gail Martin. I'm very grateful to roughly four hundred journalists who, since 1996, have helped me rise slightly above my feral dream-speak to something closer to intelligible (
http://arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/news.html
). One of these, of course, was Ed. A total of 1,274 coauthors on previous publications have greatly shaped the knowledge base from which I have drawn in these pages (
arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc_pub.html
). Sri Kosuri graciously guided me through the tricky parts of experiments I did to write and read this book in DNA form.

PGP staff and volunteers have been inspiring and patient. The core of this book concerns the synthetic biology community and I am indebted to my entrepreneurial BioFab colleagues (Joe Jacobson, Tom Knight, Drew Endy, and Jay Keasling) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering (especially professors Don Ingber, Jim Collins, Pam Silver, Peng Yin, and William Shih). Showing great courage and trust were private donors and program directors for granting agencies NSF, DARPA, DOE, NIH, and Google, who supported this
work when it was raw, speculative, and unpopular. John Brockman, definitively the most amazing literary champion of popular, edgy, intellectually provocative works, was hugely responsible for this, my first, book. When my draft was rejected multiple times by publishers, John did not abandon me but doubled his efforts. When John mentioned the option of a “ghost writer,” as employed by some of my colleagues, I realized that writing collaboratively resonated with my nature and would result in a much better book. But I would only be comfortable with a living and fully acknowledged coauthor (not a ghost). Ed was a terrific choice, with numerous popular science books under his belt already, on topics ranging from Einstein's office to Mambo chickens. This time, with Ed's help, we had no problem getting publisher enthusiasm. At Basic Books, TJ Kelleher and his staff were great. TJ confidently overruled my concerns over the cover art and book title. He noted that despite his jaded feeling that “at a certain point one becomes hard to impress. My initial reaction was scarcely mental—it was just an emphatic, emotional response; my skin exploded in goose bumps. I was speechless, and when I finally got something out I asked my art director to make me a poster of it.” Since you, dear reader, made it past the cover and are reading this page now, perhaps you had a reaction similar to TJ's and, if so, I hope that it applies to the rest of your journey through this book.

ED REGIS

I first met George Church on Tuesday, May 19, 2009, when I interviewed him in his office at the Harvard Medical School for a profile to be published in
Discover
magazine. (It ran in the March 2010 issue as “The Picasso of DNA”) But it was a meeting that almost didn't happen. Church has one of the most complicated and jam-packed schedules known to humankind (kept by not one but two administrative assistants), including meetings with as many as eight individuals (or groups) on any given day, not to mention the further tasks of teaching classes, planning and overseeing lab experiments, writing scientific papers and reports, attending conferences, and so on. (The interested reader may view Church's current schedule at
http://arep.med.harvard.edu/labmeeti.html#tour
.)

The day before, when I checked in at my Boston hotel and read my email, a note from Church appeared informing me that since he was in Philadelphia attending a scientific conference, he would have to reschedule my interview on one of a series of dates he proposed. Fortunately, I had left an “away from keys” message on my email account. Seeing the message, Church wrote an immediate follow-up note telling me that he would fly back to Boston that night and meet me the next morning as planned. Which he did.

Both Church and I have the same literary agent, John Brockman, and it was Brockman who suggested that we collaborate on a book. The result is before
the reader, and so my first thanks go to Brockman and to his partner, Katinka Matson.

Being a collaborating writer was a first-time experience for me, and I had often wondered how those who did it managed the task. Now I know . . . or at least I know how George and I did it—through a relatively simple division of labor plus repeated efforts to correct and improve each other's work. In general, a section that looks as if it must have been written by a scientist was probably written mainly by George. By contrast, sections that appear to be the product of a mere science writer are most likely by myself. Many thanks to George Church for being such a wildly inventive, deeply thoughtful, and extremely cooperative cowriter. This was lots of fun, and I would do it again in a minute.

I don't necessarily agree with all viewpoints expressed in these pages. Although it's by both of us, the book is written in George's voice, and it expresses his personal vision.

My previous books were edited by generalists. Our editor on this book, Thomas J. Kelleher, is a specialist. In John Brockman's words, he's “a real science editor” His perceptive notes on prior versions of the text materially improved its organization, presentation, and readability, and for this I am greatly indebted to him.

In addition, the entire text was read by three experts: Harold Morowitz (Robinson Professor in Biology and Natural Philosophy, George Mason University), Claire Fraser-Liggett (professor of medicine and director, Institute for Genome Sciences, University of Maryland School of Medicine), and Anthony C. Forster, MD, PhD (University Chair in Chemical Biology, Uppsala University). I am grateful to all three for spotting errors and omissions, and for requesting clarifications and corrections. Any errors that remain are of course the sole responsibility of the authors.

Research on this project was supported in part by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. I would like to thank Doron Weber, vice president, programs, for championing my cause once again.

Additional thanks go to my wife, Pamela Regis, and to Chris Anderson, Misha Angrist, Jose Folch, David Donnell, Eri Gentry, Gary C. Hudson, Kevin Kelly, Meagan Lizarazo, Nils Lonberg, J. P. de Magalhaes, Jay Valdes, and Rodney E. Willoughby Jr., MD.

BOTH

Grateful acknowledgment is made of a short (14 word) quote under the doctrine of fair use (the quote appears 20,000 times on the Internet as well): James Joyce,
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
(1916), and eight words written by Richard Feynman.

PROLOGUE

Carlson, Robert H.
Biology Is Technology
. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Chang, Timothy Z. “Kinetics of Wastewater Treatment and Electricity Production in a Novel Microbial Fuel Cell.”
Journal of the U.S. SJWP
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Evans, Jon. “Bioplastics Get Growing.”
Plastics Engineering
, February 2010, 14–19.

Folch, J., et al. “First Birth of an Animal from an Extinct Subspecies (
Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica
) by Cloning.”
Theriogenology
, 2009. doi:10.1016/j.theriogenology.2008.11.005.

Kolata, Gina.
Clone: The Road to Dolly and the Path Ahead
. New York: William Morrow, 1998.

Liu, Hong, et al. “Production of Electricity During Wastewater Treatment Using a Single Chamber Microbial Fuel Cell.”
Environmental Science and Technology
38, no. 7 (2004): 2281–2285.

Ziegler, Julie. “Metabolix Defies Skeptics with Plastic from Plants”
Bloomberg.com
, May 2009.

Web

ir.metabolix.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=239056