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Transgenic Zoo Needs Herbert's Fences
Peter Yeadon has been thinking about a Transgenic Zoo for Toronto; it is an ongoing study of nanotechnology and new medical techniques.
(One (or two?) of the more easily understood critters)
If you like Science Fiction in the News, you might find a number of interesting real-life additions to the zoo:
- Cloned Cats
- Glofish - genetically modified neon tetras
- Talking Bacteria
- Mouse with human brain
- Rat neurons in a dish play flight simulator
In Yeadon's zoo, even the gift shop offerings would be bioengineered; polymer scaffolds used to grow human organs could be used to grow fingernails for the beauty salon. Geckovators would crawl up the walls, replacing conventional elevators.
I was reading about this, when it struck me that Frank Herbert had written about something that this guy needs in his 1977 novel The Dosadi Experiment - zoo fences:
There were bold stretches of lawn and hidden scraps of lawn, and some stretches of greenery which were not lawn at all but mobile sheets of predatory leaf imprisoned behind thin moats of caustic water.
See Peter Yeadon's Transgenic Zoo site via near near future.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 3/31/2005)
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