If synthetic biologists think like scientists, they may miss their eureka moment

20 hours ago by Alistair Elfick Advances in gene programming herald exciting possibliities. Credit: Z33 Arts Centre, CC BY-SA

Synthetic biology is an emerging discipline, but paradoxically it is not particularly new. Since the mid-1970s we have been developing ways of instructing pieces of biology to perform useful tasks in an ever more efficient and sustainable way.

Much of this has found its expression in industrial biotechnology, manufacturing things like drugs, enzymes and proteins. It has applications in everything from biofuels to pollution sensors, from smart plastics to cutting-edge medicines.

You could conceive of synthetic biology as writing little DNA programs that instruct cell behaviour, like a little genetic app. Previously all we could do was to take a gene from one organism and give it into another. Now we can rewrite the gene and even write entirely new genes which do not exist in nature.

We borrow the cell's machinery, its metabolism, and run the app. It will do whatever the app tells it to do. It becomes like your chassis, or your operating system.

First base

In first-generation biotech, the instructions were very simple, such as, "make drug". We have become good at that. To take an example, the rennet used to curdle milk in cheese-making was historically extracted from stomach of a newborn calf.

Now most of it is manufactured by genetically modified yeast. That's all that is meant when cheese is said to be "suitable for vegetarians".

Contemporary first-generation biotech has become very good at instructions like, "make lots of drug" or "make lots of enzyme". But we are close to the point where we will be able to write whatever gene circuit we want. This will allow us to start with a blank sheet of paper.

We expect to be able to move to writing more complicated statements that are conditional or logical, such as: "If you sense chemical X, start making product, and if you sense chemical Y, start cell division, or else do nothing."

Originally posted here:
If synthetic biologists think like scientists, they may miss their eureka moment