DARPA announces a proposers workshop for an upcoming research program called “Generative Optogenetics (GO)” that seeks to program biology using light as the medium of transferring information, with potential applications for aiding “extended human spaceflight.”
If successful, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) GO program will “unlock a foundational capability with ramifications for medicine, agriculture, and manufacturing, while diminishing reliance on brittle supply networks that become untenable for long distance operations, like extended human spaceflight.”
And the only medium by which DARPA seeks to transfer the genetically programmed instructions onto the living cells is via light, aka optogenetics.
“The DARPA GO program aims to develop a protein complex, referred to here as a nucleic acid compiler (NAC), that can be expressed within living cells to allow an end user to program genetic instructions into those cells, template-free, using nothing but light to transfer the genetic information to the cells”
DARPA, Generative Optogenetics (GO) Program Draft, December 2025
As of today, “No existing technology enables massless information transfer to relay genetic instructions to living cells. All current approaches require some mechanism predicated on moving matter that encodes the genetic information, typically DNA or RNA nucleic acids, across biological barriers like a cell wall/membrane,” according to the program draft description.
Therefore, “Generative Optogenetics (GO) program aims to create a molecular machine that can be expressed in living cells and provide a mechanism for transducing genetic information transmitted masslessly via optical signals into the nucleic acid sequences (DNA and/or RNA), which are the native information storage for all known life.
“Such a capability will create a direct interface between computers used to design genetic sequences and living cells that operate on those sequences.”
Once again, that “massless information transfer” mechanism is light itself.
“If successful, this technology is anticipated to unlock a foundational capability with ramifications for medicine, agriculture, and manufacturing, while diminishing reliance on brittle supply networks that become untenable for long distance operations, like extended human spaceflight”
DARPA, Generative Optogenetics (GO) Program Draft, December 2025
Keeping in mind the applications for human health, agriculture, advanced materials manufacturing, and extended human spaceflight, the capabilities coming out of DARPA GO could contribute to the development of new pharmaceuticals, novel construction materials, and different forms of feedstocks.
If you ask Grok how DARPA GO could aid in extended human spaceflight, it spits back use cases such as pre-engineering cells in the crew’s microbiome, along with giving them anti-radiation shields and autonomous self-healing biology, in addition to resilient food and life support systems and manufacturing capabilities:
The primary point of contact for the DARPA GO program is Dr. Matthew J. Pava who joined DARPA as a program manager in March 2021.
He is the program manager for several DARPA programs, including:
Prior to becoming a program manager at DARPA, Dr. Pava “was a senior scientist in the Human Systems and Autonomy research area at Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Laboratories, where he led research teams as a principal investigator on multiple projects, including DARPA-funded research, in areas of mobile health, physiological monitoring, and bioinformatics,” according to his bio.
“He also founded and moderated a scientific interest group on chronobiology and sleep at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to facilitate cross-institute collaboration and communication within the Intramural Research Program.”
Looking at Dr. Pava’s DARPA projects, we see his work involving manufacturing capabilities (BRACE and Switch), as well as work involving the treatment of traumatic brain injuries (Cornerstone), the latter of which he inherited from previous program manager, Dr. Eric Van Gieson.
Where else could DARPA GO‘s technology lead?
“Genetic modifications might be needed to allow human populations to live in locations other than Earth. Suggestions include adding genes from Deinococcus radiodurans, a bacterium that can survive in high levels of radiation, and adding genes from a variety of organisms to enable humans to synthesize all 20 amino acids (humans normally synthesize only 11 and extract the remaining nine from food)”
RAND, Technological Approaches to Human Performance Enhancement, November 2021
“Human Performance Enhancement [HPE] could help military service and intelligence analysts through the use of multiple techniques to connect technology to human beings”
RAND, Technological Approaches to Human Performance Enhancement, November 2021
According to a Pentagon-funded RAND report from November 2021 called “Technological Approaches to Human Performance Enhancement [HPE],” humans themselves could be genetically modified to better survive in space and on other planets.
Examples of gene editing applications given in the report that could aid in extended human spaceflight include:
Genetic editing, according to the RAND report, has the potential to:
The word “human” is only mentioned three times in the DARPA GO description: human health, extended human spaceflight, and human protein-coding RNAs.
“While approximately 70% of human protein-coding RNAs are ≤3 kb in length, current state-of-the-art methods cannot achieve single-shot synthesis of such sequences. Instead, substantial downstream efforts are required to assemble shorter fragments into longer protein-coding sequences, a process that must occur outside the cell. This process can take anywhere between 10 days to over a month”
DARPA, Generative Optogenetics (GO) Program Draft, December 2025
“This video shows how scientists can control the behavior of cells simply by switching on a light. The technique, known as optogenetics, is teaching us about everything from how we wake up to how we learn”
Nature Video, Method of the Year 2010: Optogenetics, December 2010
“Technology developed on GO will enable unprecedented control over cellular behavior by facilitating genetic programing with single-cell spatial resolution, temporal precision to deliver different messages to a cell sequentially, and remote, scalable dissemination of genetic instructions”
DARPA, Generative Optogenetics (GO) Program Draft, December 2025
Optogenetics was named Method of the Year 2010 by Nature “for its capacity to control cell function with light.”
Now, DARPA is looking to take optogenetics a step further through the GO program that aims to create a “nucleic acid compiler (NAC) that can be expressed within living cells to allow an end user to program genetic instructions into those cells, template-free, using nothing but light to transfer the genetic information to the cells.”
“At its core, GO addresses the high-risk challenge of developing a novel, open-ended genetic control platform that functions in vivo (i.e., within a living cell) to accelerate the transmittal of genes to living systems.”
Genetically engineered humans, novel drugs, advanced materials, feedstocks, and agricultural breakthroughs could all potentially come out of DARPA GO.
Apart from extended human spaceflight, for what other purposes could this program serve?
Image Source: AI generated with Grok
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