You can order manufactured DNA today for a price. Used to be researchers had to mutate a cell to get it to express the new DNA you wanted (this is still the main way it is done using e coli). Now there is at least one place where you send them your code and they print it up from the four subunits and send it to you.
There are folks working on manufacturing organs but it is still pretty early. One of the hot goals is to make skin for burns and scar replacement. People have been dreaming of ways to make fake skin for decades. It is very hard to replicate just like membranes for fuel cells. My first job out of college in 1981 was in R & D where about half the folks were working on what they called microporous separators AKA membranes. After many years and much $ they shut it down. 30 years later we are a little closer to success but not all that much. My bet is that someone will take some nanotech tools and some biotech tools add in some hard work and genius and hit the jackpot.
Interesting times
Very interesting post Joe, but my money is on the "vulcanization/ Kevlar" approach .
Some one will spill something on something else and as they try to clean up the mess they will start saying "WTF ? " and get a Nobel prize in Medicine .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KevlarPoly-paraphenylene terephthalamide – branded Kevlar – was invented by Polish-American chemist Stephanie Kwolek while working for DuPont,[6] in anticipation of a gasoline shortage. In 1964, her group began searching for a new lightweight strong fiber to use for light but strong tires.[6] The polymers she had been working with at the time, poly-p-Phenylene-terephthalate and polybenzamide,[7] formed liquid crystal while in solution, something unique to those polymers at the time.[6]
The solution was "cloudy, opalescent upon being stirred, and of low viscosity" and usually was thrown away. However, Kwolek persuaded the technician, Charles Smullen, who ran the "spinneret", to test her solution, and was amazed to find that the fiber did not break, unlike nylon. Her supervisor and her laboratory director understood the significance of her accidental discovery and a new field of polymer chemistry quickly arose. By 1971, modern Kevlar was introduced.[6] However, Kwolek was not very involved in developing the applications of Kevlar.[8]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_GoodyearOther sources claim that Goodyear accidentally spilled the rubber mixture on a hot stove. The key discovery was that heating natural rubber and sulfur created vulcanized rubber. This process was eventually refined to become the vulcanizing process.
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