It’s A Brave New World (And Other Biotrends)
I’ve got three words for you:
- Personalization
- Individualization
- Uniqueness
These have been at the forefront of trends for 2008; many of the trends this year tie directly into one of these. Now, perhaps more than ever, people want to express themselves in their own way. Well, I’ve got a trend for you that utilizes these three words to the absolute extreme: Biotrends.
It really wasn’t all that long ago when DNA wasn’t in our everyday vocabulary. It somewhat hit the news in the 1980’s with the discovery that it can be used for identification purposes. But it wasn’t until the early to mid 90’s that it went mainstream with FlavrSavr, OJ Simpson and Dolly. FavrSavr wasn’t a big hit, but the news that we can successfully genetically engineer food was enormous. I don’t really have to say much about OJ. And Dolly made headlines all around the world.
I remember when all three of these news stories hit. That was 12 to 14 years ago.
In the grand scheme of things, that simply wasn’t long ago. Hell, we’ve been on DNA’s tail since the 1800’s. And now? well, it’s so common that you can order home DNA paternity kits. It has spawned numerous companies looking to take things to the next level with DNA Personalization in a wide range of fields.
To start, let’s look how this meshes with another popular trend: dating sites. I sometimes like to combine trends to come up with new ideas, such as hyperlocal dating. If you take the growing ease and popularity of DNA testing and combine it with dating sites, it was only a matter of time that someone began using DNA to match people romantically. Make sure you send off your DNA to My DNA Fragrance and pick up some perfume before you go on that date!
Another emerging trend is DNA art, such as:
- Genome Quilts takes your DNA and replaces the four bases with patterns. This produces a large quilt that you can truly say is yours.
- The DNA Glowframe maps out your DNA on a backlit display for $900. DNA Art UK offers something similar. There are many companies that do something this, just search for “DNA art.”
Now THAT’s unique.
Bio technology is advancing at a rapid pace, uncovering new and amazing opportunities. With these opportunities comes great interest from Joe Consumer. By being ahead of the game, you can have the domains that will be needed by future end users as his field grows.
For instance, a family in Spain has a son with Beta Thalassaemia major, a rare hereditary disease. He is now 6, but isn’t expected to live past 10 years old. When discussing having a second child, they came to realize the new baby can provide a rare opportunity for their son in the form of bone marrow. However, because the disease ran in the family’s DNA, it was possible that the new baby would have it too and thus would not be able to help. So they had the embryo prescreened to make sure it would be immune to the disease, and it worked; the baby was born immune to this rare disease. So they took the blood from the umbilical cord and are now storing it for the older child for when they do the marrow transplant.
The part in the article that claims this is genetic engineering is inaccurate. The embryos were prescreened, not genetically engineered. The procedure is not even a huge accomplishment, medically speaking, and is becoming more and more commonplace.
It’s no longer sci-fi.
In fact, we are inching closer to Gattaca (actual genetic engineering), or, perhaps much further down the line, and more frighteningly, Brave New World.
It’s scary when you think about it.
So with our better understanding of DNA and the human genome, what else can we expect to come from this?
Well, the medical field is always a fantastic place to look so lets keep looking there:
- Kid DNA kits in case they get abducted or injured.
- Diets created specifically to alter your DNA.
- DNA supplements.
How about smart drugs? No, I don’t mean drugs that make you smart, although those may not be far behind. I mean drugs that are designed based on our understanding of how genes and proteins work. I found this fascinating article written in 2005 by Danila Medvedev, a self proclaimed transhumanist, futurologist and cryonicist, which speculates on the role that genetic engineering will have in the next 20 years of human existence. It gets a bit far fetched, but who knows? Most things today were far fetched at one point.
This overall biotrend is not limited to all things DNA. There are other ways to express yourself in an extreme, and 100% unique way.
There is a company that will take your bone cells and grow them on what is called bioglass, a sort of scaffold for the bone to grow upon. They will then shape the bone into a ring and put an inscription on it. You now have a ring made out of 100% your bone; the ultimate gift of something personally yours.
Or, on a much simpler, and far less painful, note: fingerprint art.
Biotrends, and more specifically genetics, are bursting with keywords. I’ll list some here, but these don’t even scratch the surface:
- genealogy
- anthrogenealogy
- transhuman
- bioengineering
- biotech/biotechnology
- bio product(s)
- biometry
- bioinformatics
- bioremediation
- remedial ecology
- biogeographical ancestry (BGA)
- cloning (and it’s other obvious forms that are already mainstream)
- nanotech/nanotechnology
- nanorobot(s)/nanobot(s)
- microbiology
- nucleotide(s)
- immunogenetics
- genome/genomic(s)
- genome analysis/gene analysis
- gene therapy/genetic therapy
- gene silencing
- genetic mapping
- genetic programming
- genetic modification
- genetic profiling
- viral genetics
- endocytobiology
- cytogenetics
- proteomics
- symbiosis/symbiotic(s)/symbiote
- haplotype(s)
- haplogroup(s)
- polymerase chain reaction (PCR) devices (cheap personal DNA kit)
- smart drug(s)
- augmented reality
- extended identity
- human enhancement
- artificial general intelligence (AGI)
Finally, lets combine this with yet another trend: robotics. This is where the transhuman and nanotechnology keywords come in. Will humans and robots merge in the future? Some think so. And they say it may be closer than you think.
The Greatest Plant In The World Is Ready To Change Everything
There is a perfect storm brewing. The Green movement is in full gear; companies are looking for ways to display how environmentally friendly they, and their products, are. They are also looking for ways to offset the rising fuel costs. Couple these with the fastest growing multi-use plant in the world and you can expect a huge change.
The plant is bamboo. Consider these facts (pulled from Wikipedia and various other sources):
- Is the fastest growing plant in the world, growing three to four feet a day with spurts as high as one to two feet in one hour. This allows it to be harvested as wood in 1-5 years, as opposed to 40 years for oak.
- Can grow in almost any climate.
- The shoots are edible, healthy, and are widely used in Asian cuisine (and are also crafted into utensils).
- Fiber is made into paper in China.
- Releases 35% more oxygen into the atmosphere than most hardwood trees.
- Every part of the plant can be used for something.
- Requires no fertilizer, pesticides or herbicides.
- In Asia, it is used as a source of potassium and to directly treat infections.
- When treated, forms a lightweight durable board. This wood is used to craft everything from furniture to bridges, flooring, boats, skateboards and musical instruments with a million uses in between.
- Fiber is used to make yarn and fabric. Due to the soft nature, it is often crafted into clothing and bed sheets.
If I told you that these facts belong to the easiest growing plant in the world, you would likely reply with “Why the hell isn’t everything made out of bamboo then!?”
Good question.
After doing some Googling, I really can’t find reasons why we don’t use bamboo. The only negative I can find is that it is hard to control from spreading. Not just in your yard and neighbors yard, but it can begin to grow under your house and pavement too. Ouch.
But why is that stopping us from using bamboo? Bamboo isn’t something you’d place in your own garden next to tomatoes, carrots and lettuce. This would be used as a mass resource by manufacturers. It would be grown in miles upon square miles of fields.
In the end I still can not find a reason why the U.S. has not hogtied bamboo. I think it’s only a matter of time before it will.
Sooner rather than later too.
Bamboo isn’t the only multi-use plant in town though. Sorghum is becoming chic in the housing industry as well. Though it’s just a grass commonly used in foods, what companies are finding is that a byproduct can be used to make beautiful trendy wood such as Kerei boards. They are turning waste into a valuable product. Now that’s a powerful sentence any company would love to claim.
A third, more familiar, resource you can throw into this trend is wheat. Yes, wheat. It’s being turned into a ‘strawboard‘ used in building luxury furniture.
Bamboo is a versatile product that domainers can tackle in two different ways: one large bamboo site covering all the products; or a series of smaller sites dedicated to different industries that bamboo can cover. Either way, keep an eye out for bamboo domains.
Both Presidential Candidates Agree On Controversial Research
This is not a political post. I want to stay away from politics, unless it’s directly related to domaining… which this is.
Republicans and Democrats don’t agree on too many things. But there is a controversial topic- one that the two parties have fought over previously- that these two upcoming candidates mostly agree on and could spell a big boom for the medical industry in many different ways.
That would be stem cells.
Both Barack Obama and John McCain support federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research, each voting in favor of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005, which ultimately was vetoed.
Barring a catastrophe, we’re going to see one of these two as the next U.S. President, and you can bet that a new bill will be written for the winner to sign.
Stem cell related keywords will be big, as will the resulting medical discoveries of such research. As a domainer, keep an eye out on related breakthrough news and be hasty registering those names.