Ialdabaoth
Posts: 1073
Joined: 5/4/2008
From: Tempe, AZ
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quote:
ORIGINAL: hizgeorgiapeach
quote:
ORIGINAL: MsFlutter
imagine the potential (both good and bad) if counting bacteria were teamed with nanotechnology
Imgaine the potential - both good and bad - if this counting bacteria were intentionally teamed with bio-warfare?
Think about it. This is essentially bacteria that is Intentionally Designed to Mutate Itself. Granted, it mutates itself in a Specific Manner, but it's essentially a mutation, nonetheless. Now couple an intentionally self-mutating bacteria with something particularly nasty to humans - say, oh, Anthrax or Mad Cow, or something like that? How long, really, will it take - when you consider the lifespan of bacteria and the evolutionary rate involved in such an organism - to have things get out of control, and to find out that such have Mutated themselves into a form of Sentience - at least to the point where it can pick and choose which mutations to cause in itself to increase it's own survival? (Why ask that? Because EVERYTHING wants to survive - even if it has to kill to accomplish it.)
erm.... well, several issues here:
1. Actually, most things intentionally mutate themselves. It's called "sex". It hasn't destroyed the planet yet.
2. In order for bacteria to be sentient, it'd have to have a MASSIVE amount of processing - which you could theoretically get with a large enough biofilm, but it would be *slow*. There's just no way something that small can encode sufficient information to "decide" how to mutate in the way you're thinking about - except in a very rudimentary way, which many organisms do already.
3. Anything we can do, Mother Nature can do better. Infectious organisms have been trying to get around immune systems for billions of years now, and immune systems have been trying to outsmart them the whole time. In fact, the tactics both sides use are a form of deliberate mutation. The genes in your DNA that govern antibody production, for example, deliberately shuffle and mutate your genetic code all the time, to produce the widest possible spectrum of different antibody shapes. This ensures that SOMETHING will catch a foreign invader. It's highly unlikely that we could find a better combination to defeat this process than 3 billion years' worth of evolution has come up with, without a MUCH better understanding of the specifics of protein interaction than we have today. Maybe by 2020, but by then I hope to be immortal and made of titanium and carbon nanotubes.
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Teaching bacteria to count - 
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