The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (106 page)

58.
Rick Weiss, “Clone Defects Point to Need for 2 Genetic Parents,”
Washington Post
, May 10, 1999,
http://www.gene.ch/genet/1999/Jun/msg00004.html
.

59.
A. Baguisi et al., “Production of Goats by Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer,”
Nature Biotechnology
5 (May 1999): 456–61. For more information on the partnership between Genzyme Transgenics Corporation, Louisiana State University, and Tufts University School ofMedicine that produced this work, see the April 27, 1999, press release, “Genzyme Transgenics Corporation Announces First Successful Cloning of Transgenic Goat,”
http://www.transgenics.com/pressreleases/pr042799.html
.

60.
Luba Vangelova, “True or False? Extinction Is Forever,”
Smithsonian
, June 2003,
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian/issues03/jun03/
phenomena.html
.

61.
J. B. Gurdon and A. Colman, “The Future of Cloning,”
Nature
402.6763 (December 16, 1999): 743–46; Gregory Stock and John Campbell, eds.,
Engineering the Human Germline: An Exploration of the Science and Ethics of Altering the Genes We Pass to Our Children
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

62.
As the Scripps Research Institute points out, “The ability to dedifferentiate or reverse lineage-committed cells to multipotent progenitor cells might overcome many of the obstacles associated with using ESCs and adult stem cells in clinical applications (inefficient differentiation, rejection of allogenic cells, efficient isolation and expansion, etc.). With an efficient dedifferentiation process, it is conceivable that healthy, abundant and easily accessible adult cells could be used to generate different types of functional cells for the repair of damaged tissues and organs” (
http://www.scripps.edu/chem/ding/sciences.htm
).

The direct conversion of one differentiated cell type into another—a process referred to as transdifferentiation—would be beneficial for producing isogenic [patient’s own] cells to replace sick or damaged cells or tissue. Adult stem cells display a broader differentiation potential than anticipated and might contribute to tissues other than those in which they reside. As such, they could be worthy therapeutic agents. Recent advances in transdifferentiation involve nuclear transplantation, manipulation of cell culture conditions, induction of ectopic gene expression and uptake of molecules from cellular extracts. These approaches open the doors to new avenues for engineering isogenic replacement cells. To avoid unpredictable tissue transformation, nuclear reprogramming requires controlled and heritable epigenetic modifications. Considerable efforts remain to unravel the molecular processes
underlying nuclear reprogramming and evaluate stability of the changes in reprogrammed cells.

Quoted from P. Collas and Anne-Mari Håkelien, “Teaching Cells New Tricks,”
Trends in Biotechnology
21.8 (August 2003): 354–61; P. Collas, “Nuclear Reprogramming in Cell-Free Extracts,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London
,
B
358.1436 (August 29, 2003): 1389–95.

63.
Researchers have converted human liver cells to pancreas cells in the laboratory: Jonathan Slack et al., “Experimental Conversion of Liver to Pancreas,”
Current Biology
13.2 (January 2003): 105–15. Researchers reprogrammed cells to behave like other cells using cell extracts; for example, skin cells were reprogrammed to exhibit T-cell characteristics. Anne-Mari Håkelien et al., “Reprogramming Fibro-blasts to Express T-Cell Functions Using Cell Extracts,”
Nature Biotechnology
20.5 (May 2002): 460–66; Anne-Mari Håkelien and P. Collas, “Novel Approaches to Transdifferentiation,”
Cloning Stem Cells
4.4 (2002): 379–87. See also David Tosh and Jonathan M. W. Slack, “How Cells Change Their Phenotype,”
Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology
3.3 (March 2002): 187–94.

64.
See the description of transcription factors in note 21, above.

65.
R. P. Lanza et al., “Extension of Cell Life-Span and Telomere Length in Animals Cloned from Senescent Somatic Cells,”
Science
288.5466 (April 28, 2000): 665–69. See also J. C. Ameisen, “On the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Programmed Cell Death: A Timeline of Four Billion Years,”
Cell Death and Differentiation
9.4 (April 2002): 367–93; Mary-Ellen Shay, “Transplantation Without a Donor,”
Dream: The Magazine of Possibilities
(Children’s Hospital, Boston), Fall 2001.

66.
In 2000 the Immune Tolerance Network (
http://www.immunetolerance.org
), a project of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, announced a multicenter clinical trial to assess the effectiveness of islet transplantation.

According to a clinical-trial research summary (James Shapiro, “Campath-1H and One-Year Temporary Sirolimus Maintenance Monotherapy in Clinical Islet Transplantation,”
http://www.immunetolerance.org//files/12/94/05/f129405/public/clinical/islet/trials/shapiro2.html
), “This therapy is not suitable for all patients with Type I diabetes, even if there were no limitation in islet supply, because of the potential long-term risks of cancer, life-threatening infections and drug side-effects related to the anti-rejection therapy. If tolerance [indefinite graft function without a need for long-term drugs to prevent rejection] could be achieved at minimal up-front risk, then islet transplant could be used safely earlier in the course of diabetes, and eventually in children at the time of diagnosis.”

67.
“Lab Grown Steaks Nearing Menu,”
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news. jsp?id=ns99993208
, includes discussion of technical issues.

68.
The halving time for feature sizes is five years in each dimension. See discussion in
chapter 2
.

69.
An analysis by Robert A. Freitas Jr. indicates that replacing 10 percent of a person’s
red blood cells with robotic respirocytes would enable holding one’s breath for about four hours, which is about 240 times longer than one minute (about the length of time feasible with all biological red blood cells). Since this increase derives from replacing only 10 percent of the red blood cells, the respirocytes are thousands of times more effective.

70.
Nanotechnology is “thorough, inexpensive control of the structure of matter based on molecule-by-molecule control of products and byproducts; the products and processes of molecular manufacturing, including molecular machinery” (Eric Drexler and Chris Peterson,
Unbounding the Future: The Nanotechnology Revolution
[New York: William Morrow, 1991]). According to the authors:

Technology has been moving toward greater control of the structure of matter for millennia. . . . [P]ast advanced technologies—microwave tubes, lasers, superconductors, satellites, robots, and the like—have come trickling out of factories, at first with high price tags and narrow applications. Molecular manufacturing, though, will be more like computers: a flexible technology with a huge range of applications. And molecular manufacturing won’t come trickling out of conventional factories as computers did; it will replace factories and replace or upgrade their products. This is something new and basic, not just another twentieth-century gadget. It will arise out of twentieth-century trends in science, but it will break the trend-lines in technology, economics, and environmental affairs. [chap. 1]

Drexler and Peterson outline the possible scope of the effects of the revolution: efficient solar cells “as cheap as newspaper and as tough as asphalt,” molecular mechanisms that can kill cold viruses in six hours before biodegrading, immune machines that destroy malignant cells in the body at the push of a button, pocket supercomputers, the end of the use of fossil fuels, space travel, and restoration of lost species. Also see E. Drexler,
Engines of Creation
(New York: Anchor Books, 1986). The Foresight Institute has a useful list of nanotechnology FAQs (
http://www.foresight.org/NanoRev/FIFAQ1.html
) and other information. Other Web resources include the National Nanotechnology Initiative (
http:// www.nano.gov
),
http://nanotechweb.org
, Dr. Ralph Merkle’s nanotechnology page (
http://www.zyvex.com/nano
), and
Nanotechnology
, an online journal (
http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/0957-4484
). Extensive material on nanotechnology can be found on the author’s Web site at
http://www.kurzweilAI.net/meme/frame.html?m=18
.

71.
Richard P. Feynman, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” American Physical Society annual meeting, Pasadena, California, 1959; transcript at
http://www. zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html
.

72.
John von Neumann,
Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata
, A. W. Burks, ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966).

73.
The most comprehensive survey of kinematic machine replication is Robert A.
Freitas Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle,
Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines
(Georgetown, Tex.: Landes Bioscience, 2004),
http://www.MolecularAssembler.com/KSRM.htm
.

74.
K. Eric Drexler,
Engines of Creation
, and K. Eric Drexler,
Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation
(New York: Wiley Interscience, 1992).

75.
See the discussion of nanotube circuitry in
chapter 3
, including the analysis of the potential of nanotube circuitry in note 9 of that chapter.

76.
K. Eric Drexler and Richard E. Smalley, “Nanotechnology: Drexler and Smalley Make the Case for and Against ‘Molecular Assemblers,’ ”
Chemical and Engineering News
, November 30, 2003,
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8148/8148counter point.html
.

77.
Ralph C. Merkle, “A Proposed ‘Metabolism’ for a Hydrocarbon Assembler,”
Nano-technology
8 (December 1997): 149–62,
http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0957-4484/8/4/001
or
http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/hydroCarbonMetabolism.html
. See also Ralph C. Merkle, “Binding Sites for Use in a Simple Assembler,”
Nanotechnology
8 (1997): 23–28,
http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/bindingSites.html
; Ralph C. Merkle, “A New Family of Six Degree of Freedom Positional Devices,”
Nanotechnology
8 (1997): 47–52,
http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/6dof.html
; Ralph C. Merkle, “Casing an Assembler,”
Nanotechnology
10 (1999): 315–22,
http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/casing
; Robert A. Freitas Jr., “A Simple Tool for Positional Diamond Mechanosynthesis, and Its Method of Manufacture,” U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/543,802, filed February 11, 2004, process described in lecture at
http://www.MolecularAssembler.com/Papers/PathDiam MolMfg.htm
; Ralph C. Merkle and Robert A. Freitas Jr., “Theoretical Analysis of a Carbon-Carbon Dimer Placement Tool for Diamond Mechanosynthesis,”
Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology
3 (August 2003): 319–24,
http://www. rfreitas.com/Nano/JNNDimerTool.pdf
; Robert A. Freitas Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle, “Merkle-Freitas Hydrocarbon Molecular Assembler,” in
Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines
, section 4.11.3 (Georgetown, Tex.: Landes Bioscience, 2004), pp. 130–35,
http://www.MolecularAssembler.com/KSRM/4.11.3.htm
.

78.
Robert A. Freitas Jr.,
Nanomedicine
, vol. 1,
Basic Capabilities
, section 6.3.4.5, “Chemoelectric Cells” (Georgetown, Tex.: Landes Bioscience, 1999), pp. 152–54,
http://www.nanomedicine.com/NMI/6.3.4.5.htm
; Robert A. Freitas Jr.,
Nano-medicine
, vol. 1,
Basic Capabilities
, section 6.3.4.4, “Glucose Engines” (Georgetown, Tex.: Landes Bioscience, 1999), pp. 149–52,
http://www.nanomedicine.com/NMI/6.3.4.4.htm
; K. Eric Drexler,
Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation
, section 16.3.2,“Acoustic Power and Control” (New York: Wiley Interscience, 1992), pp. 472–76. See also Robert A. Freitas Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle,
Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines
, appendix B.4, “Acoustic Transducer for Power and Control” (Georgetown, Tex.: Landes Bioscience, 2004), pp. 225–33,
http://www.MolecularAssembler.com/KSRM/AppB.4.htm
.

79.
The most comprehensive survey of these proposals may be found in Robert A.
Freitas Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle,
Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines
,
chapter 4
, “Microscale and Molecular Kinematic Machine Replicators” (Georgetown, Tex.: Landes Bioscience, 2004), pp. 89–144,
http://www.MolecularAssembler.com/KSRM/4.htm
.

80.
Drexler,
Nanosystems
, p. 441.

81.
The most comprehensive survey of these proposals may be found in Robert A. Freitas Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle,
Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines
,
chapter 4
, “Microscale and Molecular Kinematic Machine Replicators” (Georgetown, Tex.: Landes Bioscience, 2004), pp. 89–144,
http://www.MolecularAssembler.com/KSRM/4.htm
.