Inspired by: Generation of Urine-Derived Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells and Cerebral Organoids for Modeling Down Syndrome
We rarely think about how casually we discard our DNA, but it’s… everywhere. Particularly interesting is something like this where they grew a “simulated” brain made out of cells reverted to pluripotency derived from urine. The limits on what we can do with organoids are limited mostly by ethics, if the researchers chose to build more complex functional copies of a brain they almost certainly could. There’s actually no reason that in the year 2000 they wouldn’t be able to create an entire genetic copy of your whole body.
What’s particularly spooky about this is that they also capture all of the metabolites secreted, and those metabolites can guide in reconstructing the specifics of how your nervous system is constructed, including generating a close enough similarity to your construction that they could, with extremely high accuracy, predict all of your behavioral responses. Now, not even a lived life (environmental interactions) can protect what’s in your head.
By the way, have you seen this cool new product? The first hands-free connected home urine lab
Sorry, no ironic twist here. You have just been replaced with a new you, and no one even realized it (which is actually kind of close to a Black Mirror plotline).
Edit: Actually that episode was annoying to me, her dude had a magic dick, was willing to do literally anything for an unlimited amount of time and she was tired of him in like two days? Getting your bell rung is a hugely positively valenced activity usually, without a corresponding trauma it’s unlikely she’d have built up enough of a negatively valenced response to it to respond so negatively to him/it. The writers obviously have not learned the teaches of peaches.
Edit 2: Although, this could also be amazing, imagine a copy of you with all of your same preferences and behavioral tendencies? Would be like a best friend in a box!