Monday, October 15, 2007

Mapping life

Some time ago I learned about the "Long Now Project."
I have to admit, I've kinda forgotten about it. Well, someone must had dusted off their email subscription database, because I've gotten 2 emails from them in the last week or so. This mornings was really interesting (and a tad scary). There are hints of "science fiction" in this blog post, but as with most "real science" there always is.
I'll put the blog post in a nutshell for you with two cut and pastes...

Thus discoveries like the one last month of an
entire bacterial genome inside the DNA of a fruitfly is exploding the
old tree-of-life models of evolution. The emerging map replaces gene
lineages with gene webs.


and

Likewise new maps of brain function are raising questions such as,
“Can we model the brain, can we download it, can we transplant it,
can we reboot it?” Prostheses such as robotic arms used to be driven
by muscle signals, but now they are being controlled directly from
the brain.


It's a short blog post so I encourage you to go check it out here.
(Rats... I tried uploading a photo of a fruitfly, but bloggers photo upload option is down again. Seems I have more problems with their photo uploader.) To see some fruit flys click here.

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