Big Data’s Glory

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Juan Enriquez writes that the marriage Big Data and Biodata will enable a new kind of computing life form.

AND BIG DATA is about to get much, much bigger, as we enter an era in which digital data merges with biology. This synthesis of codes takes the abstract world of digits and brings it back into the physical world. We of course know quite a bit about how life is expressed—in the four letters of DNA, in more than 20 amino acids, in thousands of proteins. We can copy life through cloning. Now we are beginning to be able to rewrite life, not just gene by gene, but entire genomes at a time. This is the difference between inserting a single word or paragraph into a Tolstoy novel (which is what biotechnology does) and writing the entire book from scratch (which is what synthetic biology does). It is far easier to fundamentally change the meaning and outcome of a novel, seed, animal or human organ if you write the entire thing.

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