Synthetic Biology: the past, present & future

The 21st Century is known as the era of technology and revolution. We witness something new every day and believe that this is the most that we can be surprised, but by the next day there is another remarkable discovery waiting for us.

From a massive supercomputer to a pocket size gadget, from letters that took days to reach their destination to delivering email in a few seconds, that era is not too far in which Howard Stark (of the Marvel Cinematic Universe) said that we would have “flying cars.”

Does the idea of creating ‘designer babies’, hybrids, glowing puppies that resemble jellyfish, flying elephants, or a completely new species seem attainable in coming years? Only time will tell…

For now, let us revisit the history of synthetic biology, for the story of synthetic biology has not only started with these ideas but has proved that it can be possible to redefine a lot of things that were previously considered unattainable- designing vaccines, drugs, and probiotics, creating milestones like the green revolution, the white revolution, and the list goes on. A decade ago, when biologists, bioengineers, computer scientists, and hardware developers came together, it was proposed that synthetic biology engineers should work with the same rhythm as computer scientists and should take inspiration from the earlier innovation in the microchip industry.

Synthetic biology is the branch of science that deals with modifying an existing organism to enable it to acquire new abilities for beneficial purposes. It does not completely restructure an organism, but rather harnesses the essential properties more effectively, while introducing some special elements. It’s like going to a hypermarket and buying all the requirements to make a dish and at last adding secret ingredients for the special taste. The secret ingredient here refers to the whole concept of synthetic biology.

In this area, everything starts from scratch, whether it’s DNA, RNA, or protein. Thus, the very first synthetic biology experiments were conducted to develop the recombinant DNA technology in bacteria, which led towards solving important problems in agriculture and healthcare. The approach for the design of models varies with different kinds of projects. One of them is natural selection which Darwin mentioned in his theory and is widely accepted till now by our scientific community. With the help of transduction and conjugation (a relationship between bacteria-virus and bacteria-bacteria to gain the benefit), ‘the magical gene’ gets transferred, and if it favors the bacteria, it becomes naturally selected. Later on, bacteria diversify to create a new army that has abilities that were not seen before.

RNA is considered as the main hero of central dogma because the process of transcription (DNA to mRNA) cannot be complete without it and the process of translation (mRNA to protein) cannot start without it. Engineering RNA with the aid of sensors and improving its efficiency is another approach to redefine biology

However, as Spiderman rightly said, ‘With great power comes great responsibilities.’ The same applies to this field as well. Along with the power, there are also several challenges that need to be tackled effectively.

One of the major challenges is to design specific models as they should mimic the biological problem for which they are designed. The problem increases especially with cell-based disease treatment.

Secondly, any project revolving around synthetic biology includes a hefty amount of investment of money, time, and brain, most of the time it’s not necessary that it gives satisfactory results. The constant war of product efficiency versus product cost is also another parameter to be considered.

Thirdly, designing immune cells that destroy cancerous cells, engineering microbes that create biofuels that can be put directly into a gas tank, and engineering food crops with higher yields per acre while using less fertilizer and water consumption are the ultimate goals of synthetic biology. But the question is, how easy or complex is it?

This talk by World Science Festival explains quite a lot about the past, present and future of synthetic biology.

But if we are to believe this will become a reality in a few years, then it also gives rise to a bigger question: what would be its consequences? Will it result in a similar situation like in The planet of Apes or the Netflix series Sweet tooth or the documentary Unnatural selection? If you haven’t watched them I would strongly recommend you to watch and make your brain a bit curious before diving into the synthetic biology field.