[Hplusroadmap] cellular chassis

[Dan Bolser]

On 04/03/2008, Bryan Bishop <kanzure at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday 04 March 2008, Dan Bolser wrote:
>  > Basically, good question! Not sure if any of the above helps. Why not
>  > look at some 'standard' cell types and identify the common cellular
>  > components?
>
>
> An interesting methodology would be to do gene-knockout on a
>  microarray-like environment for the rapid testing of a few million
>  different genomes, knocking out a few genes here, a few there, looking
>  for increasingly minimized cells. That work.

Yup. Some standard studies deal with 'dual knock out lethality' when A
alone and B alone have 'no phenotype' (non lethal deletions) but AB
removed together = lethal, then we can assume that A and B are
functionally coupled. There have been some high throughput studies of
this kind done in yeast.

Still, why would you want to do this other than from a theoretical
perspective? i.e. if you don't really care about studying the minimal
genome, why attempt to produce one at all? What practical use would
such a construct be that a full genome would not be?

Every tissue type has a 'full' genome, but each tissue type has a
different function / expresses a different program. While a 'minimal
linux install' can be practically useful, what practical use is a
minimal cell?

I am just curious because the emphasis on biohacking seems to be
practicality rather than theoretical understanding. I don't see any
immediate practical use for such a system...



>
>
>  - Bryan
>  ________________________________________
>  Bryan Bishop
>  http://heybryan.org/
>  _______________________________________________
>
> Hplusroadmap mailing list
>  Hplusroadmap at heybryan.org
>  http://heybryan.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hplusroadmap
>


-- 
hello