Biology and economics are intertwined on many levels. Environmental economics, unlike neoliberal economics, recognizes that our economy is dependent on a functioning biosphere. Advances in biotech make biology economically important, which has resulted in morally questionable patents on 20% of the genome and on human cell lines. It is often argued that laissez faire economics was the inspiration for Darwin's theory of evolution. Conservatives simultaneously defend social and economic Darwinism while shrieking about biological Darwinism.
Despite the importance of biology to both economics and public policy, advances in basic biology are coming so fast that the public awareness is being left behind. Public debate, when not hopelessly out of date, is often deliberately misinformed by unscrupulous theocrats like the Pope and his war on HIV facts. It is as though the public concept of biology is at the horse-drawn buggy level, while the science is at the hydrogen fuel-cell automobile level. This disconnect is disastrous for a democracy facing a critical decision point. Biologists have taken us to the verge of the "Micro-Agricultural Revolution", while fundametalists are trying to take us back to before the Scientific Revolution.
This whole area of knowledge is gigantic - too big to capture in a single diary. In this diary, I will present a syllabus of information that I think citizens need to be aware of if we are to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of either being dictated to by "Biology, Inc." or missing the jump to a biologically-sustainable technology base for the world and its population.
Neoliberal economics has ignored ecology for the entire time economics has been a "science"(sic).
The balance, or equilibrium, of demand and supply obtains ever more of this biological tone in the more advanced stages of economics. The Mecca of the economist is economic biology rather than economic dynamics
Alfred Marshall, ‘Distribution and exchange’, Economic Journal 8, pp. 37- 59 (1898).
Yes, that's EIGHTEEN-98. Alfred Marshall (1842-1924) was an English economist and one of the most influential economists of his time. (Wikipedia)
The economy is like a hungry, growing organism. It consumes low-entropy natural resources such as trees, fish and coal, produces energy and useful goods from them, and spits out high-entropy waste such as carbon dioxide, mine slag and dirty water. Mainstream economists are mostly concerned with the organism's circulatory system, how the energy and resources can be efficiently allocated, while tending to ignore its digestive system.
- Herman Daly Economics blind spot is a disaster for the planet
As we discover a startling level of detail about how biological processes are organized, regulated, and carried out, it is harder than ever for economics to ignore biology. Of course, economics has not ignored biology entirely. It has decided that the genome is just another virgin territory, whose intellectual property is to go on a first-come basis to whatever deep-pockets corporation gets to the Patent Office first. This old model is a recipe for enslavement. You thought that paying Bill Gates for access to your personal computer sucked, wait until you pay Monsanto for the right to use your own genes.
The only way to defend against the ultimate corporate land (and power) grab is to educate ourselves and the public about modern biology. Here is my course syllabus, which I hope to diary in a reasonably short period of time.
1. The technical enablers of modern biology
Modern biology would not be possible without advances in physics, chemistry, and computer science. Those advances gave us the power to observe biological processes at the atomic level, to sequence genomes, and to keep track of the exponentially-growing mountains of data that such observations have produced.
2. The confirmation of evolution
We have read the Book of Life, and it tells us that all creatures, great and small, are totally related. We use the same genes, make the same proteins, organize with the same homeobox genes, fight cancer with the same apoptosis systems. Comparison of gene sequences has confirmed and refined earlier Linnean classifications of species. Mutation rates have confirmed the time scales of evolution. The "endosymbiont hypothesis" explains the origin of the cell nucleus; and the "RNA world" hypothesis explains why RNA-based (instead of protein-based) enzymes are at the heart of the most ancient processes of the cell, like DNA transcription polymerases.
The results are in - evolution happened and continues to happen. There is no scientific "controversy". Creationsists are the new flat-earthers.
3. The end of DNA dictatorship
For many years, there was a doctrine in molecular biology: "One gene codes for one protein". That doctrine passed over years ago. One of the biggest surprises of the Human Genome Project was that humans had only 30,000 genes. Some plants have many more genes than that. What we discovered were complex systems like "alternative splicing" of protein producing "exons" from the non-coding "introns". We discovered "inteins" - proteins that modify themselves. Then we discovered that the introns were not "junk DNA", but coded for non-coding RNA(ncRNA). Then we discovered that some of that ncRNA could interfere with (i.e., shut down) production of specific proteins. RNA interference (RNAi) is used routinely to do gene "knockouts" for scientific experiments. Then we discovered "epigenetics", that certain small molecules, like methyl, attach themselves to DNA when the DNA is rolled up for storage. These molecules form a "histone code" that controls DNA expression. It is the mechanism that controls whether the gene copy from your mother or your father is expressed.
In summary, the control mechanisms of life are unbelievably complicated and self-reflexive. The old commander/slave model of genetics is as dead as phlogiston.
4. Jumping genes - the bacterial/viral rootball of the Tree of Life
About 25 years ago, Barbara McClintock won the Nobel Prize for discovering "horizontal gene transfer"(HGT), that is, gene transfer between species. We already knew that viruses insert their DNA into other living creatures' DNA. But McClintock showed that bacterial could move genes between bacterial species or even multi-celled creatures. Today, plasmid technology is a fundamental part of genetic manipulation. Beyond that, Nobelist Carl Woese argues that there is so much HGT at the bacterial level that it doesn't even make sense to talk about species at that level.
Wierder and wierder.
5. The Micro-agricultural Revolution
One of the branches of biological science today is "synthetic biology". People, such as the formidable and scary Craig Ventner of Celera, are knocking genes out of the simplest organisms they can find in nature to make the simplest, bare-bones, self-reproducing creature - an artificial lifeform. Once they decide they can't pop any more rivets and still keep it alive, they will begin the second phase of their project: to insert whatever genes and control genes they please in order to create microbial factories. These tiny living factories will produce any protein we know of or even design ourselves.
That Sorcerer's Apprentice future is on the way, as I write. Just this week, MIT announced they had engineered bacteriophage ( a kind of virus that infects only bacteria) to literally build the anodes and cathodes of lithium-ion batteries. The batteries used a new formulation that was less toxic, and of course, the living production system wasn't toxic at all.
6. Biofilms and social organization
We have begun to study the social organization of bacteria. The naive model that bacteria are these free-floating, single celled creatures is out of date. Bacteria are single-celled only until they find a place to colonize. Then they self-organize into structured films. Different species of bacteria take up positions so that the waste material of one species is the food for its neighbor. They form a sort of digestive conveyor belt. They communicate with each other by pouring "quorum signalling" molecules into the fluid they live in.
We now know that our own bodies are full of biofilms, and we rely on those films to do a lot of our digestion. In fact, by some calculations, our digestive system is more bacteria than human by weight.
Symbiosis is one of those icky, new age words that just happens to be true.
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That's the course outline. Please give me some idea of whether you agree that these ideas are important to talk about on a political board. If you want to get a jump on the coming diaries, try Googling some of the terms I introduced in the outline.