Re: poly: Emerging Technology

"Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com> writes:

> > Biotech: specific organ cloning. Transplants are the obvious market;
>
> Yeah, but we don't know how to do it.

Well, tissue engineering is getting better and better. The first step
is of course to be able to culture tissues, which is in itself
nontrivial except for "nice" tissues like epidermis or fibroblasts,
but there is great interest in the field and some real work being done
with the definite motivation of making more complex tissues. What is
needed is better control over what the cells do, likely through
chemical signals and by controlling their environment. There are
already prototype semi-artificial livers, kidneys and pancreas, not to
mention the infamous artificial ear on the back of the mouse.

See http://members.aol.com/salaned/writings/engineer.htm for a popular
article on the subject, with some names and terms that can be used for
further searchers.

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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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