It’s a big week for science. The top New York Times headline Monday morning read: “Obama Seeking to Boost the Study of the Human Brain.” Normally, such headlines are relegated to the Science Times, where only people like me will read them. But this story was deemed front page-worthy. It will change our lives in ways we can’t imagine, just as the Human Genome Project did.
The author of the article, John Markoff, reported: “The project, which the administration has been looking to unveil as early as March, will include federal agencies, private foundations and teams of neuroscientists and nanoscientists in a concerted effort to advance the knowledge of the brain’s billions of neurons and gain greater insights into perception, actions and, ultimately, consciousness.” The money — potentially as much as three billion dollars — and government support will be a “game changer.” It could bring together disparate research teams under one banner. It could foster the innovation of new research technologies and strategies. The possibilities are exciting. “One,” Markoff wrote, “is to build a complete model map of brain activity by creating fleets of molecule-size machines to noninvasively act as sensors to measure and store brain activity at the cellular level. The proposal envisions using synthetic DNA as a storage mechanism for brain activity.”
While synthetic DNA as a storage mechanism for information may sound far-fetched and science-fiction, it’s already being done. The European Bioinformatics Institute had managed to store digital information in DNA molecules and more research is being done to perfect the practice and make large scale data storage more practical.
On Jan. 28, the New York Times reported on the Institute’s work: “The amount of data, 739 kilobytes all told, is hardly prodigious by today’s microelectronic storage standards: all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets, a scientific paper, a color digital photo of the researchers’ laboratory, a 26-second excerpt from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and a software algorithm. Nor is this the first time digital information has been stored in DNA. But the researchers said their new technique, which includes error-correction software, was a step toward a digital archival storage medium of immense scale. Their goal is a system that will safely store the equivalent of one million CDs in a gram of DNA for 10,000 years.”
It’s been more than a big week. It’s been a big couple of months for science generally, but DNA in particular. A recent study highlighted in the Times on Jan. 16 and 28, “Mouse Study Discovers DNA That Controls Behavior” and “Tracing the Roots of Behavior in DNA” argues that “the architectural feats of animals … offer an opportunity for scientists to tackle the profoundly difficult question of how genes control complicated behavior in animals and humans.” The study, which examined burrow architecture in two types of mice, “[identified] four regions of DNA that play a major role in telling a mouse how long a burrow to dig and whether to add an escape tunnel.”
The fact that specific behaviors can be targeted to a small handful of regions in the genetic code is a significant development because it’s one step away from being able to identify the exact genes that influence behavior. And though understanding the link between behavior and genetics in mice is a far cry from that same understanding in humans, it’s a step towards a very profound understanding of the human experience.
A deeper understanding of genetics, and the human genome in particular, has led to leaps in medical treatments. On Dec. 9, the New York Times published an article about a novel treatment for leukemia that uses a disabled form of HIV to infect T-cells – a type of white blood cell – with a gene that causes the T-cells to attack and kill cancerous cells. The Times wrote: “Researchers say the same approach, reprogramming the patient’s immune system, may also eventually be used against tumors like breast and prostate cancer. To perform the treatment, doctors remove millions of the patient’s T-cells … and insert new genes that enable the T-cells to kill cancer cells. The technique employs a disabled form of H.I.V. because it is very good at carrying genetic material into T-cells. The new genes program the T-cells to attack B-cells, a normal part of the immune system that turns malignant in leukemia. The altered T-cells — called chimeric antigen receptor cells — are then dripped back into the patient’s veins, and if all goes well they multiplyand start destroying the cancer.”
But what’s the moral of this story?
We live in an age that is dominated by science, whether we care to acknowledge its presence or not. The work that’s being done in the fields of genetics, bioinformatics, neuroscience and medicine will, I believe, revolutionize our world in the next two decades. Discoveries in these fields give us as a species, the ability to understand ourselves in a profound way. And, those discoveries are providing us with the tools to drastically change the way we live, oftentimes for the better. But as Einstein noted: “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” We often fall short on the ethical considerations when it comes to any new technology.
The College emblem is engraved with two words: Scientia et Virtus. Knowledge and virtue. And what is science, if not the pursuit of knowledge powered by a driving curiosity about the world? But knowledge without virtue is a dangerous thing. I think it is our duty, as students at Middlebury College, to pursue a deeper understanding of science alongside the Socratic quest to know the nature of virtue, so that we can make the right decision, the logical and ethical decision, around the powerful technologies emerging from modern science. Who knows? Maybe the College’s own hydrogen-powered tractor will be the New York Times’s next front-page science headline.
Science Spotlight: Science Outside the Bubble
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