Digital biology and open science -- the coming revolution | Stephen Larson | TEDxVienna

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. What if we could better understand all of life by playing with virtual replicas inside computers the same way we play with Lego blocks?

This is the idea behind a new revolution called digital biology.

Digital Biology doesn't just use computers to measure and analyze biological systems. Digital Biology uses powerful simulation software to reproduce the basic functions of life. That means that by running a computer program we can see and modify hundreds of thousands even millions of the events that occur within DNA, within cells, within tissues, organs and whole organisms faithfully reproduced as they happen in the real thing.

This new approach to reproducing biological processes inside computers promises to give us the ability to understand malfunctions of life in a whole new way, such as disease and aging, to better unlock the promise of clean biological energy production, and a host of technologies not yet dreamed of.

What if the production of this incredible new technology was not just done behind closed doors of academic institutions always done in the public eye using open science? What if we could take advantage of new crowd-funding techniques to unleash the creativity of science by kickstarting research of this kind?

One significant project pushing the boundaries of what is possible in both digital biology and open science is OpenWorm. OpenWorm is a unique endeavor dedicated to creating the first digital organism in a computer in a completely open science manner. Hundreds of contributors from countries around the world have added to a complex reproduction of the best understood animal in all of biology, a tiny nematode worm. The project has been featured in the Economist, BBC News, The New York Times and more and successfully raised money on Kickstarter to take it to the next level. This case study in what is possible with networked science will be at the center of my exploration of digital biology as I discuss its past, present, and exciting future.

Stephen Larson is co-founder of OpenWorm, an open science project to digitally reconstruct a whole organism. He is CEO of MetaCell, a systems biology informatics company, has co-developed a patent, authored over a dozen peer-reviewed articles, and has been featured in the Economist and Wired. He received his B.S. and M.Eng from MIT in computer science and a neuroscience Ph.D from UCSD.

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