misc1284@cantva.canterbury.ac.nz wrote:
>
> I was wondering if anyone else has considered the possibility of using endo
> symbiotic nanotechnology for medical (or other) uses?
>
> I was thinking of this idea while studying some biology. You could probably
> disguise a piece of nanotech as an organelle in a cell (ie., like the
> mitochondria) and the nanotech could perform whatever tasks it is intended for,
> eg. production of antibodies etc., what does everyone think?
>
> KMC
> -= PWEI & Weiland at GODMud telnet cam037103.student.utwente.nl =-
Yes, I have for some time now. I call it "nanochondria" for the obvious reason. Most biologists today believe that complex cells began a symbiotic relationship with mitochondria at a time when the air was changing over to an oxygen rich medium, and many advanced cells did not have the evolutional feedback loop bandwidth to follow the change, whereas, some "lower" bacteria-like cells did, so they let them move in, and take care of the "oxy air pollution problem".
Today, about 30% of your body weight is mitochondria (they are in every cell). They have there own DNA, do their own replication, and you got them as starter group from your mother. They "know" how many times to replicate to have the right number in each cell. When that cell divides, and then grows larger, they replicate.
A single nanochondrium placed in an egg cell could do the same thing. The result when the organism is grown is to have them in every cell. This is along the lines of the Utility Fog, except the neighbor relationship of the nanochondria is set by the neighbor relationship of the cells. I consider this quite useful as it simplifies a large class of morphology problems.
For the most part, nanochondria would not need to be as numerous. However, they would probably need to be about as small (1000 nm long) so as not to bother things in the cell. This indicates to me that they would have to do major distributed computation in order to have useful effects. Short range acoustic wave communication should do the job and provide very large bandwidth as well or single electron pipes used as wires could run among them. (This would make anyone a walking internet with, perhaps, 10^13 stations.)
One would expect to be able to communicate with this network because it would be able to watch what is going on in every synapse you have, and nanochondria would be expected to be able to spit out neurotransmitters to talk to you. With the right software in the nanochondria you could surf your internalnet so as to do fixup work anywhere in your body, or restructure at will.
If you want anything in the external world, this nanochondia network would allow you to design and exhale a Utility Fog to go do it. And given that future generations would get nanochondria from their mothers, anyone would be born with a total non-reliance on instrumentality.
Naturally, this could be very dangerous (monsters from the id?). It opens the can of self-modification. Most stable systems are driven by goals that they cannot change. When any system is given the power to change its own basic structure and goals, it tends to lockup or develop chaos. In the movie Lawrence of Arabia, Ali is trying to understand why Lawrence would want to be out in the desert when he could have anything he wanted back in England. Lawrence replies, "Yes, but you can't want what you want". With nanochondria you could change your own basic motivation, and if you did, that could lead you to change again, and again.
Back on the mechanistic side, nanochondria could be used to xerox yourself. This could be carried out many ways. One way is to have the nanochondria linearize you. They could do this by, first, outputting a chemical that gels your cells. Yes, you would be dead at that point, but well preserved. Next the nanochondria start making more copies of themselves, sectioning off the cells they are in, and packing things up. Once packed up, the nanochondria could link up so as to transform you into a long piece of string. This string is linked clumps of nanochondria that could produce tiny wings so that the string could take off into the atmosphere (something like the way tiny spiders send strings off into the wind and then ride them).
Once in the air, the nanochondria could start collecting molecules and working on duplicating what they have in their bags (packed up parts of cells). Then at some point the string, having doubled along its length, splits apart into two strings that are very close to identical (DNA, as below, so above). They continue on to some preselected place and then begin the process of winding back up into the new 3D copies of you. The cells are unpacked and reconstructed, and finally, ungelled.
Although complex, the above does not violate any law of physics. It would be very exothermic, and rate limited by heat removal. Energy and certain hard to get molecules may have to be stored up a head of time, and I expect both of the new yous would be underweight and very hungry.
I suspect that posting this will bring on a flood of negitive comments because when the press sees things like this they go nuts demonstrating that we are nuts. I was going to do so later, but the subject came up, as I knew it would sooner or later. So, go ahead blast away. It does not matter because you are reading this line at this moment and a storm of electrical activity is organizing itself in your neural net as an extention of the one that is going on in me right now. Thus the idea has replicated its pattern in you (though mutated) at this moment. Yes, I know you are reflecting on this, but it has already infected your conscienceness as if a virus. We are the context, the information is riding us, and has its own emergent behavior. So be it.
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