Genetics in Second Life April 11, 2007
Posted by Bertalan Meskó in Gene, Invention, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Sciencefun, Web 2.0, genetics, science.trackback
I thought I could create an account in Second Life and see how genetic information is organized in this virtual world. I was curious whether I could find any kind of genetic or medical information. Now, I show you the results with many images. As I’m getting closer to this world, I’m going to start a series on the relatinship between medicine and Second Life. This first issue is about genetics. You just got to visit Scienceroll the next few days. But first, what is Second Life about?
Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by a total of 5,438,479 people from around the globe.
So let’s see what Second Life offers on the field of genetics. There is a Gene Pool place with plenty of educational items.
The blue bubble is a eukaryotic virtual cell
On the several floors of this bulding, you can watch 3D tutorials or simple videos on bacterial transformation, chromosomes, etc. On the first floor, I made a quiz of genetics:
Then I wanted to read about the structure of DNA. I wanted to know how they interpret genetic terms. It seemed to be interesting:
On the other floors, I’ve made pictures of the Hershey-Chase experiment, PCR, chromosome galleries, DNA sequencing:
And what was the most astonishing part of my little journey: wear your favourite chromosome! As in Second Life, you can wear any kind of textures, you can also wear your favourite chromosome:
And if you get tired of the dozens of educational opportunities, then outside in the garden, you can make test crosses:
The point when I got convinced about this project’s importance and quality was that when I saw the genome floor:
And I haven’t talked about virtual doctors, hospitals, medical libraries and support groups. So keep up with Scienceroll, it’s going to be a medical Second Life week.
“Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents.”
If only that were true… Guess what: it isn’t. Linden WTF Inc. owns it all. Dammit.
If you were the creater of this virtual world, you wouldn’t own it?
I’ve gone past The Gene Pool a couple of times and have never found anybody there.
I read about all these companies opening up shop in SL and that lectures are done there and everything.
I’ve even been to a private party where a DJ friend of mine performed live from RL to SL to a huge crowd. It’s odd, but fun.
Someone should organize meetings of life science professionals in SL. That’d be a blast.
You’re right. Health Info Island tries to organize at least the medical things in SL. But I’m going to write about it soon.
“If you were the creater of this virtual world, you wouldn’t own it? :)”
Guess what. I wouldn’t. Jimbo doesn’t own Wikipedia, and for me, it seems natural. Then why isn’t it so natural with SL?
What I so much detest in so-called “Web 2.0″ is that it is a major backstep from the freedom that O/S introduced into the computing scene by introducing strong dependencies on commercial organizations. What a shame.
Dot com. “Com” stands for commercial. Mind that.
[...] This is the second post about Second Life, the virtual world where medicine has a special place. In the first post, I wanted to describe what kind of educational possibilities Second Life has on the field of [...]
[...] about genes in organisms other than humans. Over at ScienceRoll, Bertalan has two posts; one about genetics in Second Life, the three-dimensional virtual world recently built by internet users, and another containing a [...]
[...] I’ve already written two posts about Second Life, the virtual world. One post about the role of genetics, and one about the role of medicine in Second Life. Now, I’d like to talk about a fantastic [...]
[...] about genes in organisms other than humans. Over at ScienceRoll, Bertalan has two posts; one about genetics in Second Life, the three-dimensional virtual world recently built by internet users, and another containing a [...]
[...] educational opportunities. One of these (my personal favourite) is the Genomic Island which I’ve already written about. The island is full of genetic quizes, virtual experiments, animations, links to useful webpages [...]