Fountain pens with the biological inks
(bInk). The inks were made using fluorescent proteins as
colour
producing parts were not available at the time.
While working at
Ginkgo Bioworks, I got involved in one of the first
industrial endeavours of synthetic biology. Having also started my own start up
(
BioBright) in the UK around the same time, I began thinking about the
conceptual changes in technology development that could be brought about by the field. The most common arguments
that one encounters in that regard is that of scaleability. In fact, synthetic biology is -by and large- concerned
with engineering organisms -mostly prokaryotes- to create valuable products or breakdown unwanted ones. An example
is
LS9's biodiesels. The scaleability argument
mainly lies on the ability of engineered organism to reproduce.
Plato's Cave Allegory. Are the projected shadows true/real? The prisoners who have spent their entire lives knowing
only the shadows would take the shadows for real people, they would not have access to the truth -in Plato's
meaning of the word- to know that the shadows are mere reflections of puppets.
With this project of making bacteria express colour to turn the culture into an "ink", I wanted to highlight the
philosophical concept of language being a limiting factor when transmitting thought. In fact, language is a
collection of words and structures agreed upon by people who share that language. However, a thought is complex and
multidimentional concept often much larger than the subset of words at your disposal. Therefore, when expressing a
thought through language one alters it to fit the convention of the words. In speech however, no living being other
than the speaker alters that expression of thought.
By having bacteria as ink, we create a written expression system where the intermediary is living. Because the
words themselves are composed of growing organisms with their own goals of growth, it is likely that we will see
the thought/message morph into different shapes than that of letters carrying meaning. Today, technology is made to
suit our needs fully, irrespective of time. A "living" alternative may not give us such flexibility, instead
providing us with "windows" of time in which our technology is indeed effective. This raises a fundamental question
as to where these technologies can be applied and which expectations the "client".
The bInk pens on my lab notebook. Please don't chew these pens.
Sheets of paper covered with the bacteria. The inks were made using
fluorescent proteins so a blue light source is needed to be able to see the ink colour. However, the cells were
expressing so much of these proteins that the cultures had a hue.
Me demonstrating the inks
2011 Building a New Reporter System using Synthetic Biology for Bio-Electronic Communication
IBM
Research Poster Presententation
(
PDF 24.8mb)