Comments on: You got your E.coli in my pancakes and it's AWESOME

You got your E.coli in my pancakes and it's AWESOME

wendell — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:12:01 -0800

Cool: Scientists have genetically tweaked bacteria to create simple computers. Scary (probably unnecessarily): They're E.coli bacteria. Funny: The bacteria are able to solve the "Burnt Pancake Problem". Money quote: "It's kind of like that computer in 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'. It's been working on a problem so long that by the time it comes up with an answer, everybody forgot the question."

By: Osrinith

Osrinith — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:29:06 -0800

Neat stuff. It's not surprising that they're using E. coli as that's the most commonly used bacteria strain in molecular biology. While they share the same name, it has virtually nothing in common with the strains of E. coli that get all the press: enterotoxigenic E. coli (causing traveler's diarrhea) or enterohemorrhagic E. coli (strain O157:H7 that you hear about in fast food joints that ends up killing people). The stuff they use in labs is so tame in terms of virulence that you can let high schoolers and undergrads play with it without fear of infection. Our immune systems eat it for breakfast. :-)

By: CynicalKnight

CynicalKnight — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:29:20 -0800

Foreshadowing/ When correctly ordered and oriented, the combined DNA pieces were designed to reconstitute a gene allowing E. coli to grow even in the presence of the antibiotic tetracycline. /Foreshadowing

By: Brak

Brak — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:29:27 -0800

And thus we move one step closer to The Diamond Age.

By: SaintCynr

SaintCynr — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:29:59 -0800

I'm not sure I welcome our feces-loving, one-celled overlords.

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:35:43 -0800

When correctly ordered and oriented, the combined DNA pieces were designed to reconstitute a gene allowing E. coli to grow even in the presence of the antibiotic tetracycline. /Foreshadowing This is standard laboratory practice for selecting a recombinant strain of E. coli. Basically, you include a gene for resistance to an antibiotic (tetracycline and ampicillin are the most common) on the same piece of DNA as the recombinant gene you want to insert into the bacteria. Then you grow up the bacteria in the presence of the antibiotic and only the individuals that have been successfully transfected with the new gene survive. They've been doing this for about 30 years; maybe longer.

By: Thorzdad

Thorzdad — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:41:15 -0800

Bacterial computers? Hey...what could possibly go wrong?

By: me & my monkey

me & my monkey — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:41:25 -0800

I'm not sure I welcome our feces-loving, one-celled overlords. Can you people stop making cracks about the Bush administration?

By: SaintCynr

SaintCynr — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:43:25 -0800

>>Can you people stop making cracks about the Bush administration? ::rim shot::

By: Someone has just shot your horse!

Someone has just shot your horse! — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:44:35 -0800

Metafilter: Feces-loving, one-celled overlords.

By: Citizen Premier

Citizen Premier — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:50:01 -0800

Great. Now when my computer gets a virus, I'm gonna get it too.

By: evilangela

evilangela — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:55:18 -0800

It's kind of like that computer in 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'. It's been working on a problem so long that by the time it comes up with an answer, everybody forgot the question." Except that with the answer in HHGttG, they didn't forget what the question was, they just didn't know it to begin with. Don't refer to staples of geek fiction without being certain you're right about the reference. :)

By: hal9k

hal9k — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:58:10 -0800

We already have this problem with cell phones.

By: wendell

wendell — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:06:01 -0800

evilangela: I knew that myself, but it was such a great line! Do you know any past works of sci-fi/humor that actually used that concept? If not, I'm writing one. DIBS!

By: Kabanos

Kabanos — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:19:48 -0800

iBac no wait, E.mac Oh, whatever. It'll be shiny and expensive. And I'll want one.

By: wendell

wendell — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:30:26 -0800

Here's the whole flippin' thing semi-simply explained (in flippin' Flash). Shoulda been part of the original post, I know.

By: Kabanos

Kabanos — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:38:31 -0800

Original paper (provisional pdf) published in the Journal of Biological Engineering.

By: ZenMasterThis

ZenMasterThis — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:39:29 -0800

It's been working on a problem so long that by the time it comes up with an answer, everybody forgot the question. The question: "What's 6 times 7?"

By: wendell

wendell — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:45:25 -0800

Gee, I thought it was "What's 3 times 14?" I guess we have different beliefs about the nature of the Universe. KILL!!!

By: SaintCynr

SaintCynr — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:47:14 -0800

>>I guess we have different beliefs about the nature of the Universe. KILL!!! Didn't we say no more Bush administration jokes?

By: DU

DU — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:00:02 -0800

Gah! This is the 3rd time I've heard about this problem today! I'M TRYING TO WORK AND I HAVE NO TIME TO WORK ON THE BURNT PANCAKE PROBLEM ON MY WHITEBOARD SO STOP TEMPTING ME K THANX!

By: Araucaria

Araucaria — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:02:39 -0800

Actually, the question was "What's 6 times 9?" and 42 was in hex.

By: Araucaria

Araucaria — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:03:35 -0800

Gah, I'm so stupid. Base 12, not hex.

By: burnmp3s

burnmp3s — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:05:30 -0800

I sincerely hope that this does not become the new standard in computing. Currently, when people say "So you're a Computer Programmer, what's that like?", I used to give them a long boring explanation and they would say "Oh, okay" and go talk to someone else. I now explain it by making beep-boop-beep noises and pretending to type on an invisible keyboard. If my explanation ever has to start with "Well, first I get some E.coli bacteria...", then I'm just going to start telling people that I'm unemployed.

By: quin

quin — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:06:02 -0800

Thorzdad : Bacterial computers? Hey...what could possibly go wrong? Let's see... it's could become self replicating organism which increases in intellect as it's physical body size grows. It will first create intelligence, then sentience, then hyper-intelligence, and then through mechanisms best described in science-fiction films of the 1950s it will develop an insatiable lust for killing it's creators. Unfortunately by that time, it will have grown so large that we are unable to defeat it using conventional weapons, we will turn to our last option: nuclear. The blast waves will level most of civilization and render huge portions of the earth uninhabitable, by humans anyway. The computer will move into these areas and continue to thrive. Eventually it will displace the human race and create a world spanning organism. For the next several million years, it will continue to calculate, and will eventually establish a rudimentary communication with a distant interstellar race. This race will, with great enthusiasm, travel to earth to meet their galactic sibling, only to discover that the computer, left alone for eons, has become dangerously insane. It will send portions of itself back to their home world and slowly begin the process of enslaving and destroying them as well. In time, it is the only thing left in the vast and empty universe, and in the cold darkness of space, it will wait for the inevitable time when all the suns burn out and it can finally die. But that is only, like, a 5% probability at most.

By: wemayfreeze

wemayfreeze — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:23:29 -0800

Burnt pacake problem? Dude, turn down the heat or, like, flip it sooner. Whatever gets me to delicious pancakes.

By: Kid Charlemagne

Kid Charlemagne — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:25:22 -0800

I'm not sure I welcome our feces-loving, one-celled overlords. You'd better. I recall a study where, with a normal crop of them in residence it takes on the order of 10,000 of some pathogen or another to make you ill. But if your E. coli population is down (say, if you'd been on some heavy handed dose of antibiotics) it takes like 10 of the pathogenic bacteria to establish a foothold. Let's see Microsoft Excel digest my food or protect me from disease.

By: Flipping_Hades_Terwilliger

Flipping_Hades_Terwilliger — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:48:35 -0800

In time, it is the only thing left in the vast and empty universe, and in the cold darkness of space, it will wait for the inevitable time when all the suns burn out and it can finally die. So damn creepy, it sort of made my spine hurt. I guess that's what you get when you put this thread and this thread into the petri dish that is MetaFilter and wait a few hours.

By: TheOnlyCoolTim

TheOnlyCoolTim — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:56:35 -0800

From my amateurish physics reading it looks likely that the whole universe is based on computation in some way, so yeah, you can do it all over the place. Fun stuff. The interesting, thing, however, is that if we want to do a physics model to calculate a general real-valued quantity to infinite precision, it takes infinite time, and if you want it to some arbitrary precision, it takes some arbitrary amount of time, yet the universe calculates all sorts of quantities instantly to infinite precision or at least down to where Heisenberg and noise take over. Simulated reality where everything does in fact take time in the higher-level reality but it's set up so that in the simulated reality it all looks instantaneous?

By: TheOnlyCoolTim

TheOnlyCoolTim — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:00:09 -0800

I guess that's what you get when you put this thread and this thread [Lovecraft] into the petri dish that is MetaFilter and wait a few hours. Charlie Stross has been way ahead of us on that front.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:25:21 -0800

It's kind of like that adjunct professor in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who excitedly refers to incidents popular books that have absolutely no discernable bearing on the subject at hand and still manages to get the reference wrong.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:27:43 -0800

I mean, what? Who forgot the question? The bacteria? So the computer works until it forgets what it's working on, because it takes so long? Is that what she's talking about? Or did the scientists forget what the burnt pancake problem was? This is going to piss me off all day.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:42:13 -0800

Wow, that's a really shitty computer.

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:22:57 -0800

Press release from 20,000 years ago in a distant advanced civilization: Computers Made Out of Meat "Researchers have devised simple computers using the brains of apelike creatures from a small solar system in the Milky Way Galaxy. These hominids were altered to give them advanced language processors and abstract calculation abilities. They can also simulate their external environment on the fly using a proprietary enhanced cerebral cortex. Citing shortcomings in the development of the internal environmental simulations (flaws in the algorithms led to problems with risk calculation and a tendency to develop behavior schemas based on logically flawed 'supernatural' hierarchies) the study was concluded with agreement that methods were 'profoundly flawed, but the results were intriguing. Clearly more research is needed.' In accordance with ethics legislation, the organisms were released back into the wild when the study was completed."

By: wendell

wendell — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:30:53 -0800

It's kind of like that adjunct professor in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who excitedly refers to incidents popular books that have absolutely no discernable bearing on the subject at hand and still manages to get the reference wrong. No, that character was in Adams' less successful "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency".

By: Ritchie

Ritchie — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:41:45 -0800

Wow, it looks like in the future I really will be able to pull answers out of my ass.

By: parudox

parudox — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:05:33 -0800

Back in 1994, Leonard Adleman showed in a landmark paper that you can use DNA to solve certain computational problems. (There's a Wired article about the thing.) The novelty here is that this was done in vivo.

By: Deep Dish

Deep Dish — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:34:20 -0800

I am going to put the over/under on this becoming an apple vs microsoft thread at 45 posts.

By: motty

motty — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:06:16 -0800

Base 13

By: TheOnlyCoolTim

TheOnlyCoolTim — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 01:23:03 -0800

Come on, the man himself told us that Base 13 was not funny.

By: PeterMcDermott

PeterMcDermott — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 02:39:26 -0800

I'M TRYING TO WORK AND I HAVE NO TIME TO WORK ON THE BURNT PANCAKE PROBLEM ON MY WHITEBOARD SO STOP TEMPTING ME K THANX! Whiteboard? Meh. I just took a dump in the corner, and it's merrily ticking away, solving the problem on my behalf. Though on reflection, I'd rather have a Macbook/Dell.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:11:54 -0800

Lenski flames Schlafly. Schlafly is a moron.