• Conversation from Michael Levins YouTube – academic content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTzBW_9fl0s between Michael and Ricard Sole.

Rather than attempt to explain ‘synthetic biology’, I’ll share two experiments discussed in a recent conversation between Michael Levin and Ricard Sole.

Stuff that’s good to know:

• Synthetic Biology – Designing and creating new biological parts, devices, or systems, or redesigning existing ones for useful purposes.
• Morphospace – A way of imagining all possible body shapes or structures that could exist in living things, even if they don’t exist in nature yet.
• Cybernetics – The study of how systems (living or machine) control and communicate with each other.

Ant School for Bacteria

If you were a curious child, you’re almost certainly familiar with some of the peculiar behaviours of ants – ant colonies are one of natures most interesting demonstrations of ‘emergence’.

Individual ants follow simple, hardwired rules – following pheromone trails, reacting to the presence of food, avoiding obstacles, and communicating with other ants through touch and chemical signal.

With no top-down command, they miraculously, collectively execute complex, collective tasks – building intricate nests, finding the shortest path to food scraps, defending their colony.

Bacteria on the other hand, do not.

Ricard Sole is currently undertaking a project attempting to implement this sort of collective behaviour in bacteria.

Metamorphosing Immortal Worms

In one of Michael Levin’s experiments, they took genetically normal flatworms, and manipulated their bioelectric circuits (the electricity running between cells).

This manipulation caused the planarians to regenerate new heads, resembling those of other species.

The work of both Sole and Levin challenges our existing understanding of both ‘Intelligence’ and ‘Consciousness’.

Here are some of the additional big ideas from that conversation.

Synthetic Biology Might take us Beyond what Evolution has Achieved

by designing and creating artificial biological systems, we might be able to make living things that nature hasn’t produced through evolution. It’s like saying,

Fringe ideas becoming mainstream

Ideas once considered marginal and speculative, like bioelectricity, are now seen as important in understanding new forms of intelligence, consciousness, life.

Top-down versus bottom up approach

Trying to build complex biological systems by putting together small parts (bottom-up) might be too hard. Instead, we might need to start with the big picture and work our way down (top-down). Kinda like – it’s easier to sculpt a statue from a big block of stone than to build it from tiny pebbles.

Complexity in living systems

Comparing how living things and complex software evolve – through small changes and copying what works – which is different from how we typically design machines. It’s questioning whether we can truly engineer living things the same way we build cars or computers.

Language versus communication

Exploring the idea that there might be a gradual progression from simple signaling to complex language in biological systems, and understanding this could give us insights into how complex behaviors and possibly even consciousness arise in nature.

Final thoughts

The mysteries of mind and consciousness continue to deepen beyond grasp.

The story I find most compelling, is one in which we redefine our understandings of these concepts, rather than digging deeper down the same holes.

Experiments like the ones by Levin and Sole seem to be doing actually this.

We are lucky to have these guys translating and testing abstract theories in the lab.

This is ultimately where we’ll see major shifts in our framing of the big questions.