CurtAdams@aol.com wrote:
>
> Organisms with complex macrostructural construction abilities
> have rather slow doubling times. If you want to look at a house-
Not if they're nutrient unlimited. Doubling time of biomass
in a fermenter is quite impressive.
> builder, the appropriate model is a tree, with doubling times in
> years or decades. Further, we're a very long way from
> enigneering trees to grow particular shapes. And think how
That's arguable. It's a threshold thing, so you can't extrapolate
from presence or absence of progress in current time window.
> long it will take to test it! :-)
My main quibble is parasite load. Artificial structures
can stay clear (for a while) because of the founder effect.
Parasites sap vigor, and hence feedstock ROI. They also
tie up a scarce resource (people's attention) thus sapping
elsewhere by proxy.
Understanding biology will not necessarily be relevant to
industrial productivity, but for medical purposes and substrate
migration that knowledge is invaluable.
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