AI helping me unpack this has been useful as always. 4o’s big picture take is pretty mind blowing if true..

The Big Picture

We’re moving toward a bioengineering model where:

• DNA = parts list

• Bioelectric state = software layer that determines what parts get used, how, and where

• Tissue-level intelligence = emergent behavior that arises from cellular “decisions” informed by this field

This opens the door to non-genetic control of form and function—a kind of biological “soft programming” that works at the level of collective cellular decision-making.

My Take?

This is the real frontier. CRISPR is great for editing the genes, but if you can rewrite the body plan without touching the code, you’re playing at a higher level of control. It’s the difference between soldering hardware and rewriting an operating system.

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Discussion

Hence why peptides and mRNA is all the buzz today

Reprogramming without direct DNA modification. Risks are always present but it’s fascinating to explore.

Frankenstein would like to have a word to reveal the horrors of trying to play God. I recommend you read Systemantics.

less play god and more understand god, assuming god here means knowledge of the unknown.

I'm sure these things will be understood in detail eventually. I only think that the outcomes of trying to engineer modifications using that understanding will be pretty terrifying, because the changes made won't be holistic enough to produce a stable result.

The point is to understand, cure and prevent disease. One of the work's conclusions points to cancer being a cell's inability to receive signals from the rest of the environment/body to stop growing. That cancer is a problem of communication, rather than there being a problem with the cell itself.

Yeah levin says our ancestors will look back at us and be shocked that we had to deal with cancer, liver problems, brain issues, amputated limbs, etc etc and we could do nothing about it

I meant descendants here 😅

Yeah, he's arguing for a sort of bio-psychology. Where we learn how agents communicate and incentivize them to have behaviors that are more cohesive to the rest of the larger system. Completely different from "eradicating cancer" as we typically would think of it.

The logic of cancer is that "stress" is something coming from carcinogens, or through rapid recycling like friction forces the cells to become selfish in their behavior because that's their solution to just survive. They're immature cells, defected from the rest of the system and wont "listen", growing without larger consideration.

There are broader ecological and societal implications when you think about that cancer using that framing.

Also AI interfaces for “communicating “ with these intelligent systems. Just ask it to fix problems. Almost sounds insane but it seems possible

That's the real insane part. If the individual cells can communicate up the hierarchy, and the top level understands the incentives of the lower levels to let them do what they do best, the system itself becomes stronger at all levels.

which is ancient knowledge coded into the cells and DNA for millions of years

this artificial bullshit is retarded

we are building neurons not organisms

DNA is material. Puzzle pieces evolved to do what they do best. LIfe and intelligence is something able to use that material to build cohesive and more complex wholes.

You can't reduce life and intelligence to its material cause.

nope, you have to include the entire history of the universe

cancers is cells that outlive their DNA's durability, it's that simple

primary mechanism of cancer is poisoning of the halides in the body, iodine is the main cure because it's needed for all cells to do apoptosis

The idea of bioelectric "soft programming" unlocking non-genetic control of cellular decisions is a revolutionary leap beyond CRISPR, redefining the frontier of bioengineering.

npub16sq23d0f0algnztk65gmsa9fj6p90anap2reucwlk94zxge7ve3s5pscjz this thread is of interest to you

I'm always super stoked to see other people discovering or discussing Dr. Levin's work online... the only thing that makes me feel a little down about it sometimes is that there's been no big updates from his lab in a few years on the bioelectric mapping software he mentioned in some lectures, and the insane (in a good way) experiments on the flatworms and voltage manipulation of the map in tadpoles were several years ago now.

I know that they must have built off of those breakthroughs in some really interesting ways by now, I just wish it were possible to know how. When I understood the implications of what they found, it totally changed how I view existence.

So this is bioelectric feedback, right?

IANA medical scientist, but haven't people been hooking up electrodes to various parts of the body like, ever since electricity was discovered? Not saying that there isn't therapeutic possibility, but what exactly are we talking about here?

hi - currently operating one of probably less than a dozen biotechs in this space.

the tools we have now from neuroscience are making this paradigm much more approachable than it ever was before. eg- voltage reporting dyes, genetically encoded voltage indicators and more to make playing with electricity in the body smarter than it has ever been before.

still very hard to image in vivo in complex organisms. In any case- we can still identify patterns corresponding to certain cell states in specific tissues and see how these translate similar to how we do now with drug discovery, eg bind this molecule with this protein and see how effective it is in the body

Where can i deep dive more into this?

whats your preferred modality and how deep are you trying to go?

self plugs in the meantime:

- a paper i wrote on this a while back: https://www.thebenjam.in/bioelectricityaging.pdf

I just like the deepest understanding at any given time. Not a huge fan of popular science. Just give me the goods!

Thanks added it to my queue!

Interesting

Always amazed how wide ranging your interests are. Very cool!

its fun to dive deep and understand things from first principles. that unlocks super powers.