Anthroporgenic Biology (a speculative scenario)
03 Oct 2021
It was a windy day outside, the breeze on the side of Iris’ face was starting to become distracting. She reached over from her office chair and swiped her finger down the biofilm beside the windowEngineered Biofilms could be made from bacteria that have modified DNA. Some opportunities are discussed in a Nature Reviews article (DOI: 10.1038/s41578-020-00265-w). An article in Sensors talks about biofilms specifically for sensing (DOI: 10.1021/acssensors.7b00418) . It felt smooth, but cool as the brick wall it covered. The flow of air stopped abruptly as the window closed. Nothing had moved, but minuscule holes in the transparent biofilm window had closed. Iris is an AI technician. She oversees simulations of scientists’ idealistic visions of new proteins and helps to translate them into realityAccording to an article on Nature.com (DOI: 10.1038/d41586-020-03348-4): “The ability to accurately predict proteins’ structures from their amino-acid sequences would be a huge boon to life sciences and medicine” . She saw in her mind what was happening with the window, though most people wouldn’t give it a second thought.
Iris rolled her eyes a moment later as the cold air from the air conditioning hit the skin on her other side.
“O-home,” she said, a patch on the wall started to glow softly in anticipation “why did you do turn on the a/c?” she asked the AI assistant that lived in the walls of her apartment. There was a brief, but too-long pause before the reply as a server somewhere computed an answer. The Open-Home project AI was never as quick as the commercial software when it had to process a response.
“The internal temperature is above 24° so I turned on cool air–do you wish to change the thermostat setting?”
“No.” Another pregnant pause from the AI.
“OK. If you wish to change automation settings, you can use any Open-home panel.”
Iris took off a slipper and launched it it like a paper aeroplane towards the entrance to her home office. It hit the invisible biofilm panel beside the door, the solid tap notifying the AI assistant that it was time for it to stop talking. It was too late though, once you break your flow (or your AI assistant decides your flow is broken) your home notifications are turned back on. She could update that setting later, one of the advantages of installing an open-source home assistant.
“You have three new emails, none of which are marked important.” O-home said, “and I have added bread to your shopping list.”
Thinking that was odd, and since her mental flow was long gone now, she went to the kitchen, reacquiring her slipper on the way. She was sure she had bread, and she definitely needed coffee.
She opened her cupboard and saw the bread bag was glowing red the ultraviolet LEDs in her cupboard made the bag glowEngineering E.coli to detect mycotoxins (from mould) and fluoresce was presented at an iGEM competition entry in 2013 from TU Darmstadt . Mould, probably not safe to eat any more. She picked up the bag and looked at the bread inside. It looked fine, she couldn’t see anything growing. But the red colour on the packaging indicated that the mould was already growing through the food. She sighed and placed the bread on the garbage chute and it started glowing again. An invisible camera (probably in the ceiling) made from a dense lensing patch of photosensitive biofilm saw the red glow. The garbage cover opened towards the appropriate chute and the bread disappeared.
Iris started her coffee machine on its little ritual. The panel next to the kitchen window was bright green, like some kind of slime. A home system like this needed to be taken care of–it needed food too. Iris’ apartment block was pretty new, so it the system was built in, rather than retro-fitted. The designers of the used green, she guessed, to remind people that it’s alive. She reached under the kitchen sink and took out a small spray bottle, with a generic brand nutrient-rich broth and sprayed it onto the green patch. The liquid was absorbed into the biofilm before it started to run down the wall. As the green colour faded a message was left behind:
“Castle HomesTM recommends NutriTechTM supplement for your integrated biohome system”
Anthropogenic biology at its finest, bacteria in the biofilm advertising at you. In your own home. The microscopic assholes. The text faded away, and the wall again looked like there was nothing there, no technology, no computer. It was only if you looked at just the right angle could you see a reflection from the shiny surface of the biofilm.
The coffee machine finished and Iris took the drink back to her office and sat down. One simulation had finished successfully, AI models used to generate proteins still took a while to run. There was a new ticket from a scientist that had been assigned to her. The information fields described novel protein, ordered from an oncologist, which would bind to a specific marker for a specific type of cancer cell, making it blindingly obvious to the body’s immune system. The protein would eventually be manufactured by an army of bacteria, running custom DNA, using up to 10 base-pairsHachimoji DNA with 8 amino acid “letters” is described in a Science article (DOI: 10.1126/science.aat0971) and summarised in this Wired post. to create this entirely synthetic protein to hook onto a specific kind of cancer cell and broadcast its cancerous-ness to the body.
Iris looked out the window and thought about this, and her part in it. She reached over and tapped the biofilm patch twice. Microscopic holes all over the window, opened to 20% of their maximum. The refraction of the light changed slightly as it passed through, and the breeze returned. Iris turned to her screen and reviewed the protein design as she sipped her coffee.