Will tissue engineering make humanoid fabrication possible?

[Lren Zvsm]

In tissue engineering, we've seen pioneering work on the growing new structures (e.g. new ears) for human beings who have lost the original structures due to disease, disorder, or injury. It involves the creation of a scaffold made mostly of collagen, which is then seeded with lots of cells that grow and reproduce until a functional organ is complete and ready to be attached to the natural body.

https://www.newsweek.com/tissue-surgeon-ear-mouse-human-organs-transplant-cell-phones-666082

https://www.livescience.com/46971-techniques-creating-organs-lab.html

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_rele...trol of precise architecture and organization.

My question is: Within the next 1000 years, if civilization and hence science can keep going for that long, and in light of what we know about tissue engineering, could entire humanoid creatures be biofabricated in adult form, rather than gestated as naturally occurring, cloned, or transgenic humans would have to be?

 

[BillTre]

A thousand years is a long time.
A thousand years ago (about 1000) there was not much of what today would have been considered biology knowledge.
There was no deep understanding of how bodies worked, how genetics worked, the dynamic state of biological form (evolution), little understanding of the interconectedness of different kinds of life (ecology), or adaptive changes over long time periods (evolution).
Now we have an awareness of genetics at the equivalent of the atomic level for chemistry (genomic sequences), We just have to figure out what it means.
Biology is not yet what I would call a mature science like physics (much more tightly inter-related set of different kinds of data). Biology is not yet so nicely figured out.

In a thousand years, I would predict genetically designed organisms, or parts of organisms, could be used in what is basically a kind of transplant of something into a host organism (the patient). This is the only constraint on what kind of transplant operations could be done (the physical movement and insertion of the replacement tissue). Beaming in tissue would be a nice trick.

Genetically, in a thousand years, any kind of tissue could be produced, in tissue culture (or by whatever other technique might be available at the time), by then, or in genetically designed organisms,) in any shape.
The forms (shapes/functions) of the tissues (even now) can be produced with templates (such as 3D printed collagen) which can be 3-D printed.
The developmental pathways leading to different cell types, the genes expressed in different cells types will be controllable.
The physical distribution of different cell types in tissues will be controllable.
(If you can control all the cell types and their distributions in people, you control the biology of those people (probably genetically).
In a detailed extension of this, control brain development, control mental capabilities.
You could design people, with capabilities, now not being considered, if you had a politically cooperative environment.

Transplants of parts of small size bits of brain tissue is now possible experimentally, (don't know about what's going on with people).
Stem cells will provide a lot of opportunities to generate different kinds of tissues.
Limits to the physical transfer of tissue, will probably be greatly reduced in a thousand years (beam it in Scottie).

Ethics (controlling what kind of manipulations are legal), with respect to human biological manipulation, will change in response to the available technology, the conceived benefits, the what is thought of as ethically important at the time, and political controls.

 

[Lren Zvsm]

A thousand years is a long time.
A thousand years ago (about 1000) there was not much of what today would have been considered biology knowledge.
There was no deep understanding of how bodies worked, how genetics worked, the dynamic state of biological form (evolution), little understanding of the interconectedness of different kinds of life (ecology), or adaptive changes over long time periods (evolution).
Now we have an awareness of genetics at the equivalent of the atomic level for chemistry (genomic sequences), We just have to figure out what it means.
Biology is not yet what I would call a mature science like physics (much more tightly inter-related set of different kinds of data). Biology is not yet so nicely figured out.

In a thousand years, I would predict genetically designed organisms, or parts of organisms, could be used in what is basically a kind of transplant of something into a host organism (the patient). This is the only constraint on what kind of transplant operations could be done (the physical movement and insertion of the replacement tissue). Beaming in tissue would be a nice trick.

Genetically, in a thousand years, any kind of tissue could be produced, in tissue culture (or by whatever other technique might be available at the time), by then, or in genetically designed organisms,) in any shape.
The forms (shapes/functions) of the tissues (even now) can be produced with templates (such as 3D printed collagen) which can be 3-D printed.
The developmental pathways leading to different cell types, the genes expressed in different cells types will be controllable.
The physical distribution of different cell types in tissues will be controllable.
(If you can control all the cell types and their distributions in people, you control the biology of those people (probably genetically).
In a detailed extension of this, control brain development, control mental capabilities.
You could design people, with capabilities, now not being considered, if you had a politically cooperative environment.

Transplants of parts of small size bits of brain tissue is now possible experimentally, (don't know about what's going on with people).
Stem cells will provide a lot of opportunities to generate different kinds of tissues.
Limits to the physical transfer of tissue, will probably be greatly reduced in a thousand years (beam it in Scottie).

Ethics (controlling what kind of manipulations are legal), with respect to human biological manipulation, will change in response to the available technology, the conceived benefits, the what is thought of as ethically important at the time, and political controls.

Would the fabrication of humanoids through the use of tissue engineering be an option some time during the next thousand years (i.e. 1-1000 years from now)?

 

[BillTre]

Total fabrication or just adding/modifying parts?

Total fabrication would probably be more efficient by just modifying genetics and growing what you want.

 

[Lren Zvsm]

Total fabrication or just adding/modifying parts?

Total fabrication would probably be more efficient by just modifying genetics and growing what you want.

I'll take your word for the fact that transgenic humans would be easier to produce. But total fabrication through tissue engineering would guarantee that the humanoids thus created would not reproduce, or have their genes re-engineered to enable them to reproduce if the original artificial genome dictated sterility.

 

[BillTre]

You could also genetically design sterility into a genetic construct human.

 

[Lren Zvsm]

You could also genetically design sterility into a genetic construct human.

And someone else could use gene therapy to design it out.