Or imagine programmable immunity, designing and harnessing molecular devices that guide your immune system to detect, eradicate or even prevent disease.
He needed programmable computers to calculate the size and force of shock waves from explosions, and game theory to address the thorny question of nuclear deterrence.
Dr Zhang and Dr Sternberg have now demonstrated programmable CRISPR-Cas gene-editing systems that do just this by harnessing a protein encoded by a jumping gene known as Tn7.
Base editors use the programmable searching mechanism of CRISPR scissors, but instead of cutting the DNA, they directly convert one base to another base without disrupting the rest of the gene.
Imagine programmable plants that fix nitrogen more effectively or resist emerging fungal pathogens, or even programming crops to be perennial rather than annual so you could double your crop yields each year.
You could use this super cheap programmable computer and maybe you put a sensor in it, and maybe you make you know another actuator, and then you make something happen in the real world.
The thing that makes a CPU powerful is the fact that it is programmable – if you write a different sequence of instructions, then the CPU will perform a different task.
CPU 之所以强大,是因为它是可编程的——如果你编写不同的指令序列,那么 CPU 将执行不同的任务。