[BBF Standards] Two separate standards

[Deepak Chandran]

Drew,

   This description is clear. The confusion comes when you allow parts 
made from other parts to be categorized as "parts" as well -- how can 
this be? At the same time, they may not be devices either because they 
do not have proper interfaces.

--Deepak

Drew Endy wrote:
> Exactly correct.
>
> DNA engineers will be concerned with how to construct DNA.
>
> Parts engineers will be concerned with how to build parts at the  
> primary nucleic and amino acid sequence level (and whatever else  
> synthetic biological parts get made from).
>
> Device engineers will be concerned with how parts are best organized  
> to make devices.
>
> System engineers will be concerned with how devices are best organized  
> to make systems.
>
> Each type of engineer needs to be able to communicate at least one  
> level "down" and "up" in this abstraction hierarchy.  Such  
> communication should be limited and well structured.
>
> Meanwhile, I don't mean to add fuel to any "larger than life T7  
> autogene fires," but check out the last 6 pages from the synthetic  
> biology comic book, if you've not seen it before.
>
> http://www.nature.com/nature/comics/syntheticbiologycomic/index.html
>
> Pages 7-8 detail making a device from parts.
>
> Pages 9-12 detail some issues of common signal carriers for  
> transcription based devices.
>
> Cheers!
> D.
>
>
>
>
> On Mar 15, 2008, at 2:11 PM, Herbert Sauro wrote:
>
>   
>> I think Deepak has made a useful observation. At one level an engineer
>> won't care about the DNA sequence, of more interest is the functional
>> properties of the boxes he/she is putting together. On the other hand,
>> the designer of functional boxes will be concerned with the DNA  
>> sequence
>> since in designing for example a promoter or gene with a specific
>> property the DNA sequence is clearly paramount. It looks like there  
>> may
>> be a natural separation here.
>>
>> Herbert Sauro
>>
>>
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>
>
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