Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Varied Notes on Synthetic Biology
I haven’t placed this in one of the research templates just yet due to an inability to figure out how to make sense of synthetic biology research. Some of the challenges include:
- It’s developing too quickly to get a good handle on, at least at the moment (even many researchers in the field are pretty unclear about how much synthetic biology will be able to live up to the hype)
- The hype focuses on big, and often controversial concepts: We’ll be able to engineer children from scratch, we’ll create entirely new organisms. That sort of thing. As a result, the hype and controversy is (most likely) about stuff that’s further than 10 years out.
- There are a lot of important implications for synthetic biology on traditional medical care and pharma development, which I’ve highlighted below, and which are important to sort out and make sense of for our clients, BUT
- I think there are additional, more interesting stories and implications we can develop—in theory, as a technology, synthetic biology enables the reengineering of just about everything.
- One very important undercurrent to synthetic biology in general (see here: www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14Biology-t.html and here: www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/28/090928fa_fact_specter) is that it has its roots in open-source culture and, in contrast to, say, nuclear power, is spreading in a highly democratized fashion. As a result, one of the biggest questions/concerns/opportunities is that small groups with relatively limited resources will be able to engineer anything from new seeds to molecules that eat atherosclerotic plaque to new kinds of fuels. So trying to confine our discussion to a single domain—drug discovery, say—doesn’t really capture the broader range of questions here.
So, in that spirit, some signals and initial thoughts on what they might mean:
Synthetic biological tools for food pollution testing, etc.
See here, sorta: 2009.igem.org/Team:IPOC1-Colombia:Project_Description
And here for a non synth-bio example: www.technologyreview.com/blog/experimentalman/24362/
In other words, it would be possible to engineer bacteria to respond to certain chemical pollutants to look for nutritional properties, contaminants, etc. in food and water—basically, the story here would involve direct-to-consumer tools to test and monitor what they put into their bodies.
Synthetic biology for green health/health design:
scienceblogs.com/oscillator/2010/02/cultural_synthetic_biology.php
The use of synthetic biology to design environments—could be an interesting concept; modify organisms to have specific impacts on our perceptions, or to respond to certain stimuli in environment to give us cues about our health… synthetic biology neuro design? Responsive microbes to the environment (i.e., you could engineer/design something in your house to change color in response to pollution.)
Synthetic biology for medical devices/medical treatment:
2009.igem.org/Team:NTU-Singapore
This is a more conventional example—some research teams are exploring developing synthetic molecules that eat through atherosclerotic plaque to improve heart health/prevent heart attacks and other such things. A separate team is looking into developing synthetic wound dressings that accelerate healing processes and that sort of thing. In this sense, synthetic biology could open up new opportunities for medical devices—like wound dressings, but more advanced—as well as new ways of delivering medical care.
Synthetic Biology Drugs:
The only example I know of, amyris synthetically designs an anti-malarial drug that otherwise needs to be developed through a laborious, time consuming and expensive farming process… Note that this isn’t a new drug but a better way to develop a drug (of course, it’s also an early signal.)
DIY Genetic Engineering:
www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14Biology-t.html
The topic of a NY Times Magazine piece from last week, I think the term DIY is a bit of an exaggeration—the point is more that smaller groups with less funding can experiment with a wider variety of efforts toward developing synthetic molecules/treatments/etc.
Potential experts:
Drew Endy (Stanford)
Paul Rabinow (Berkeley)