Bioengineering a Dragon

[Nikolai Braun]

Anybody ever think about making a dragon?  What it would take, how you would do it?  WHY you would do it?  

I'm part of the team at Revolution Bioengineering working on color-changing flowers, and we saw that people are finding their way to our website using search terms which imply that there are people out there who are thinking about how to bioengineer a dragon...

Thus we began our guide: How to make a dragon

What do you think?  Have and comments?  

We have a part two queued up, the part three is unwritten right now-- we were hoping to craft that using some of the discussions that happened here.

[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

Reminds me of chickenosaurus. IIRC they made them have claws and teeth.

Still misses some features to be a real dino/dragon

Btw, there's a beetle that expells hot chemicals into a predators face. Made by H2O2 and another chemical. Seems very dragon-ish

If you don't need it to look like a dinosaur (and either way, they probably looked a lot different than we immagine; they probably had feathers) you should staqrt with a lizard and make it expel hot chemicals + methane. Would be pretty much a flightless dragon-

[Cathal Garvey]

Well, they speculated about chickensaurus, AFAIK they never made one. :)

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[SC]

I think you'd first have to deine "dragon".  Colors?  Fire-breathing?  Wings?  Very large or will small do?   Fun to think about.

[Keira Havens]

Determining what organism to start with is actually the next post (coming up soon). It all depends on what sort of dragon you want down the road - Chickens and lizards are both pretty reasonable starting points & we're going to talk about why you'd pick one over the other. 

[Nikolai Braun]

Sure!  That's a conversation Keira and I had-- what is the Mark1 dragon?  The minimally viable product that is still a dragon?  

I think a dragon is nothing without flight.

Maybe we start with ferociously bad breath, and work on the fire breath for later models?

We're probably going to have to start with a lap dragon at first. 

[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

What bothers me more is, would you be allowed to keep a dragon? If you only use crispr mrna to edit the genome it's not transgene.

[Nikolai Braun]

To be clear, this is just fantasy.  Nobody is making a dragon.  It's a just a silly discussion about how one would make a dragon.

For you question about permission to keep a dragon-- USDA approval is roughly 5 years and $200 million, and relative to the overall cost and time of making a dragon, that's nothing.  

The public comment section of the approval process would be interesting.

[SC]

Some types of dragons have wings, but Chinese dragons don't.  I guess it depends on what you'd want to end up with.  Also, the dragons with wings (judging by the fantasy art I'm thinking of) have four legs and two wings, so you'd need to engineer a six-limbed critter.  

 

[Cory Geesaman]

I've actually considered this as seriously as an act of mental masturbation so I figure I'll chime in.

What would it take?

As someone with a background in data analytics and mostly computing/programming my first step would be to sequence all (or as much of as possible) known cellular life to have the data ready.  From there you could apply semantic matching algorithms with known genes across species to create a key of footprints (semantic footprints are like sentence structures when the technique is applied to words).  With that key you could then extrapolate known and unknown genes across the vast majority of other cellular life.  There are some key things you'd want (development of appendages, the ability to breath fire from something like the bombardier bettle's binary explosive with activator and suppressor protiens to prevent the dragon from harming itself, etc) but ultimately you'd be going for the semantic matching database required to do such a thing.  From there you could construct a higher-order language that utilizes the semantic database to compile to DNA after coding out and debugging your dragon.

WHY you would do it?

It's kind of an absurd project to take on that would require a mastery of synthetic biology.  There are other things like houses made from modified trees designed to be planted, dyson trees for space colonization or lower-order organisms to produce drugs or other useful compounds but they all come with a huge negative aspect: a tendency to cut corners and not crack the whole problem of how precisely to write DNA to do arbitrarily complex tasks in order to meet the specific task.  A dragon would be an absurdly-complex undertaking by modern science and in shooting for it you would likely crack the whole DNA system before you got there.  Undertaking such a thing would open the door to more arbitrarily complex tasks (think of a leviathan style space ship for colonization that could be grown on asteroids and act as a scaffold onto which you could graft biotech components - it's something WAY outside the realm of our current understanding of biotech but the same solution would make such a thing possible by reducing the problem down to something no more complex than computer programming is today).

That said, I've actually done some serious research into the costs of doing the sequencing and data analytics side of things, spoken with vendors and should sequencing costs continue to drop it could be done in about 20-40 years for about the same cost as the Human genome project.  If you're interested in collaborating on it send me an email and we can go over details.

[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

"
For you question about permission to keep a dragon-- USDA approval is roughly 5 years and $200 million, and relative to the overall cost and time of making a dragon, that's nothing.  "

If you dont breed the dragon for food, is the usda still involved?


Without the Human genome project, we wouldn't have cheap sequencing... they started in a time where you could sequence like 200 bp a week. so there definitely should be a dragon project!

[Nathan McCorkle]

Micro/mini-dragons seem like they'd be more maintainable and
easier/cheaper to care for.

Other's have mentioned chickens and lizards, but why not a bat?

[Nikolai Braun]

On Thursday, January 22, 2015 at 3:12:12 PM UTC-7, Mega [Andreas Stuermer] wrote:

If you dont breed the dragon for food, is the usda still involved?

I'm assuming we can't do it without a viral promoter or two. 

[Nikolai Braun]

You know, we started with the idea of chickens because we knew there was a sequenced genome and transgenic tools.  but a quick search of teh interwebs, and voila!

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130820/ncomms3212/full/ncomms3212.html

Sequenced genome of Brandt's bat (Myotis brandtii).

[I am thinking of a name change]

Oh sure, why not those flying reptile looking creatures in avatar. Or chest poppong aliens. Or spice worms from dune, Or... oh yeah, it's the DIYbio

There should definitely be a dyson tree project. Not only do you get to create something that doesn't exist but it makes the journey worth the effort. Where as with dragons you'd need to fight EPA tooth and nail. Also try to justify a dragon to the "just because you can, doen't mean you should" crowd

There is no jurisdiction in space.

[Nikolai Braun]

Part II of our Dragon Guide is up: Design considerations.  We also found a flash game on Deviant Art to help you refine your dragon design as well.  

[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

Im sure you could do this without viral promoters. EF-1a e.g. will be strong and ubiquitous.

Imagine an unregulated dragon... :D

[Cory Geesaman]

On Friday, January 23, 2015 at 3:58:18 AM UTC-5, Angry monkey wrote:

Also try to justify a dragon to the "just because you can, doen't mean you should" crowd

 

"just because you can" is the foundation of all of science.

[Cory Geesaman]

The right to bare dragons is pretty much covered in the constitution.

[Cathal (Phone)]

American constitution. And only if the dragon can be considered a weapon, so don't omit "fire-breathing". And don't fly above FAA unregulated fly-zone.

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[Jonathan Cline]

Make sure to engineer their appetite to enjoy eating malaria-carrying mosquitoes, so as to eliminate an incredible harm to humanity which is threatening to destroy the last working antibiotics on earth even today.

Presumably if you're doing a fantasy write-up you must include some real life saving goals and moral lessons just as superheroes demonstrate in fantasy comic books.


## Jonathan Cline
## jcl...@ieee.org
## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223
########################

On Wednesday, January 14, 2015 at 3:11:22 PM UTC-8, Nikolai Braun wrote:

Anybody ever think about making a dragon?  What it would take, how you would do it?  WHY you would do it?  

I'm part of the team at Revolution Bioengineering - tracked working on color-changing flowers, and we saw that people are finding their way to our website using search terms which imply that there are people out there who are thinking about how to bioengineer a dragon...

Thus we began our guide: How to make a dragon - tracked

[Cathal Garvey]

Or we'll just carry on having fun, that's also a good avenue for discussion.

On 28/01/15 09:50, Jonathan Cline wrote:
> Make sure to engineer their appetite to enjoy eating malaria-carrying
> mosquitoes, so as to eliminate an incredible harm to humanity which is
> threatening to destroy the last working antibiotics on earth even today.
>
> Presumably if you're doing a fantasy write-up you must include some

> /*real*/ life saving goals and moral lessons just as superheroes

> demonstrate in fantasy comic books.
>
>
> ## Jonathan Cline
> ## jcl...@ieee.org
> ## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223
> ########################
>
>
> On Wednesday, January 14, 2015 at 3:11:22 PM UTC-8, Nikolai Braun wrote:
>
> Anybody ever think about making a dragon? What it would take, how
> you would do it? WHY you would do it?
>
> I'm part of the team at Revolution Bioengineering

> <http://revolutionbio.co> - tracked <http://revolutionbio.co>

> working on color-changing flowers, and we saw that people are
> finding their way to our website using search terms which imply that
> there are people out there who are thinking about how to bioengineer
> a dragon...
>
> Thus we began our guide: How to make a dragon

> <http://revolutionbio.co/bioengineering-dragons/> - tracked
> <http://revolutionbio.co/bioengineering-dragons/>

>
> What do you think? Have and comments?
> We have a part two queued up, the part three is unwritten right
> now-- we were hoping to craft that using some of the discussions
> that happened here.
>

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[Jonathan Cline]

The point, in case you missed it: Do both at the same time.
(The comic book analogy.)

## Jonathan Cline
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[Cory Geesaman]

A dragon in itself is a perfectly useful creation in and of itself, see my post in this thread from January 20th for why.  Besides, a dragon would be a poor way to get rid of mosquitoes unless you are talking about dragon flies.  The cool factor of a dragon is more than enough reason to make it (just look at the designer herp community - it's enormous and nearly all species of amphibians and reptiles are bred in captivity because there are lots of people that love keeping them as pets, many species even come in a plethora of "morphs" at this point typically based on temperment, ease of care or appearance).  A dragon makes sense as the moonshot of synthetic biology and to get some serious sequencing to take place of all species along with the subsequent data analytics required because there's already a huge community of captive breeders of amphibians and reptiles that are hugely active in selective breeding programs so sample acquisition can more or less be eliminated as a cost of the project.  To reiterate another previous post "just because you can" is the foundation of science along with what is "cool" - once you have the foundation then engineers take over to turn the discoveries involved into "useful" devices, organisms, etc.  You aren't going to learn how to build everything from dragons and leviathons to dyson trees and oil producing bacteria if you start with oil producing bacteria or dyson trees because they are too simple, they aren't cool and the natural inclination of the researcher will be to achieve the objective without getting diverted on all kinds of tangents to gain a complete understanding of synthetic biology that extends into practically any creation.  You need something both arbitrarily complex and "cool" to keep people focused just enough to stick with it without someone in the managerial level screaming about deadlines because dragons are such serious business they need them by x date to meet a project timeline.  A dragon is more or less a perfect project for mental masturbation that is more or less guaranteed to lead into very useful avenues of development and that nobody will really care too much about maintaining intellectual property rights over or otherwise suppressing the research gained.

[Jonathan Cline]

Oh, then in that case, I stand very corrected.  Thanks.   I was thinking more along the lines of the dragon in Mulan as voiced by Eddie Murphy which could be a perfect eliminator for the major carrier of an otherwise resilient disease.  I'm glad to have been set straight.  The global threat of Ebola was initiated by a child playing with infected bats though, so watch out what you're breeding. 

## Jonathan Cline
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