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Synthetic biology, ethics and the hacker culture

Andrew Maynard — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 09:00:53 +0000

While the DIY Biotechnology community has grown considerably since this post, the piece still captures something of what is still a young movement, and one that challenges assumptions about top-down technology innovation.

Originally posted June 13 2008

Read Thomas L. Friedman’s “The World is Flat” or Neal Stephenson’s “Cryptonomicon”, and you get a glimpse into how the hacker culture that emerged at the tail end of the twentieth century revolutionized the digital world. Will a confluence of emerging technologies—including information tech, biotech, and nanotech—lead to a similar revolution in the biological world?

Behind every computer screen is a complexity of software and hardware that together create a virtual world in which many of us spend more time living out our lives than is probably healthy—whether crunching numbers, playing games or churning out our latest blog. This world is built in part (some would say a large part) on the work of technically savvy individuals—hackers—who have learned the art of manipulating the fundamental building blocks of the digital world.

According to that fount of all knowledge Wikipedia, a “computer hacker is a person who enjoys designing software and building programs with a sense for aesthetics and playful cleverness.” A big attraction of hacking is the ability to change “reality” (albeit a digital reality) by manipulating the software (and hardware in the broadest interpretation of “hacker”) that defines it. And the factors that make this possible? Easy access to knowledge and tools, and the development of global grassroots networks for information sharing.

But here’s a question: what are the chances of a biology-based hacker culture arising; enticed by the lure of tinkering with biological codes that define living systems, rather than digital codes that govern digital systems? The answer is that it is already here. The “biohacking” culture is alive and kicking, and already pushing the boundaries of what is possible and acceptable.

Reading through a just-released report on the social and ethical challenges of synthetic biology commissioned by the U.K. Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (Synthetic Biology. Social and Ethical Challenges. PDF, 740 KB), I was particularly intrigued by a short section on what has been termed “garage biology.” (For a succinct overview of the report , I would recommend Richard Jones’ recent blog entry at Soft Machines.) On the subject of garage biology, authors Andrew Balmer and Paul Martin of the Institute for Science and Society at the University of Nottingham had this to say:

“As DNA sequencing becomes cheaper and quicker and second hand equipment becomes available on eBay the power to create synthetic sequences may be dispersed to many individuals and groups. Biohackers have also become known by the portmanteau ‘biopunk’ (biotech punk), that has its origins as a science fiction genre. The most recent, and significant addition to this movement has been the online publication of a ‘Primer for Synthetic Biology’, a manual, written in simple, non-technical language, for those wishing to engage themselves in some bio hacking.”

With my interest piqued, I went on-line to check out the “biopunk” community. A quick search brought up this recent comment from a teenager on the biopunk.org website:

“A few weeks ago I had somebody in school complaining about her eating disorder, Ceiliacs disease or something, and how she can’t eaten certain foods because of it. She has mentioned this before, and frankly I was tired of it, so I spent just *20* minutes on the internet during my lunch period and found a cure hidden in the patent database, and then told her how to use http://e-oligos.com/ and thenhttp://biohack.sf.net/ and http://openwetware.org/ to get the materials she needs from http://labx.com/to implement the solution in some gastrointestinal bacteria and cure it herself. Problem freakin’ solved.” [I have no idea whether synthetic biology is as accessible to the masses as this comment would imply (I suspect not). But clearly there is a growing culture of people interested in playing with genetic software and hardware in much the same way as conventional hackers play with computer software and hardware. And this is being spurred on by increasingly easy access to tools and knowledge within a growing grassroots community.

Additional parallels between digital and biological hacking abound. For instance, one of the drivers behind the development of the digital world most of us now inhabit was the open source movement, providing open access to computer code on the understanding that hackers shared any improvements made to the code with the rest of the world. Similar movements are growing up around synthetic biology, with the significant difference being that the “code” is now biological. A good example is the BioBricks Foundation that is developing an open source registry of standard biological parts that can be used to “program living organisms in the same way a computer scientist can program a computer.”

While only time will tell whether the biopunk movement will have the same impact on synbio as the hacker culture had on the digital world (and there are plenty of skeptics out there who are doubtful), the idea of “hacking biology” appeals to plenty of people. Especially where it brings within their grasp tools that enable engineering-based concepts to be applied to biological systems. Drew Endy—a leading proponent of synthetic biology—had this to say in a recent interview:

“Programming DNA is more cool, it’s more appealing, it’s more powerful than silicon. You have an actual living, reproducing machine; it’s nanotechnology that works. It’s not some Drexlarian (Eric Drexler) fantasy. And we get to program it. And it’s actually a pretty cheap technology. You don’t need a FAB Lab like you need for silicon wafers. You grow some stuff up in sugar water with a little bit of nutrients. My read on the world is that there is tremendous pressure that’s just started to be revealed around what heretofore has been extraordinarily limited access to biotechnology.” [While the debate surrounding the social and ethical development and use of synthetic biology tends to focus on issues such as bioterrorism, uncontrolled releases, global justice and the creation of “artificial life,” it is quite possible that a successful biopunk movement will change the context within which this debate is conducted. How do you establish a framework for socially and ethically responsible development when the person you need to reach is an adolescent teenager constructing new biological code in their basement?

This is a major challenge to the development of safe and societally accepted synthetic biology. Biological hacking may never develop on the scale of computer hacking —“life” might shatter our hubris by turning out to be more complex than anyone imagined. But I do not think we can afford to be complacent here. The four recommendations made in the BBSRC report will definitely help pave the way towards socially and ethically responsible synthetic biology: recognizing the importance of maintaining public legitimacy and support; ensuring the scientific community engage with society on the impacts of their work; pursuing partnerships with civil society groups, social scientists and ethicists; and putting in place a robust governance framework before synthetic biology applications are realized. However, I suspect that these are just the first steps in a long process to ensure society as a whole takes responsibility for developing and using an increasing level of control over the basic building blocks of life wisely.

As a final thought, when a hacker causes the digital reality in their computer to malfunction through tinkering, they can simply reboot and start again. It might not be so simple when hacking life itself. This may be a flawed analogy, but it is probably something the new socioethics of synbio should address if serious mis-steps are to be avoided.

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The full August in the Archives 2010 series can be browsed here

Smart science for the 21st century

Andrew Maynard — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 09:00:11 +0000

In February 2008, the National Academy of Engineering launched 14 grand challenges for engineering. These were the inspiration for this post, but rather than focus on the challenges themselves, I thought it would be interesting to consider how science and technology are going to help address them. Over two years on, the ideas I was writing about here seem more relevant than ever – as I write this, I am putting the finishing touches to a World Economic Forum report that echoes many of the challenges I outlined back in March 2008.

Originally posted March 6 2008

Can current approaches to doing science sustain us over the next one hundred years? An increasing reliance on technological fixes to global challenges — including nanotechnology — demands a radical rethink of how we use science in the service of society.

Over the next century we will perhaps be facing the greatest challenge in the history of humanity: sustaining six billion plus people on a planet where natural resources are running scarce and our every action results in a palpable environmental reaction. Progress towards sustainability will only come through integrating relevant science with socially-responsible decision making. Yet the science policy dogmas of the 20th century may be stretched to breaking point in the face of 21st century challenges.

And these challenges are immense. The U.S. National Academy of Engineering recently published 14 “grand challenges for engineering” — the culmination of a year-long project exploring and reviewing the greatest technological challenges facing us in the 21st century. At the top of the list is development of economical solar energy and fusion-energy, followed by crafting carbon sequestration methods, improving access to clean water, creating improved medicines, preventing nuclear terror, and eight other pressing needs. The challenges are a stark reminder of the limitations of our current capabilities, and what needs to change if we are to continue growing as a society in harmony with our surroundings.

The solutions to many of these challenges will come from emerging areas of science and technology that include nanotechnology, as well as areas such as synthetic biology and cognitive science — the science of how we use our mind to think and learn. These are not the physics, chemistry and biology of 20th century science. Rather, they represent a blurring of the boundaries between conventional disciplines — a mixing-up of ideas and concepts that has the potential to stimulate tremendous innovation.

For example, nanotechnology combines elements of physics and chemistry to find new solutions to old problems. Cheap, efficient solar cells and access to clean water are just two areas that this emerging technology is showing promise in. But combine the ideas of nanotechnology with molecular biology and you open the door to playing with the building blocks of life itself — DNA. Imagine what we could achieve by inventing new organisms that harvest energy, clean up pollution, and build new materials atom by atom. Sounds like science fiction, but simple nanotechnologies are already being used in daily life; and synthetic biology is rapidly becoming a reality, with the first artificially constructed bacterium genome reported in January of this year.

In addressing the major challenges of the 21st century, it is the convergence of these new technologies that will deliver the solutions. But policymakers, scientists and engineers will only be able to transform the new knowledge from research to practice if strong policies and frameworks are in place to support and nurture these emerging technologies. 20th century science and technology thrived on the twin dogmas of partitioned disciplines and knowledge diffusion. Vast investment in basic research was thought to lead — eventually — to technological solutions; a Darwinian natural selection of the best ideas generated by self-absorbed researchers. And while “interdisciplinary collaboration” was the mantra of many a grant proposal, few ventured far from the comfort of their particular disciplinary caste.

But if 21st century solutions are to be found to 21st century challenges, we need a new way of doing science. This “smart science” must train future practitioners to work across conventional boundaries and remove the barriers to interdisciplinary research that continue to persist. It must be socially relevant. And it must engage citizens at every level — with the recognition that scientists need to be socially literate, as much as citizens need to be scientifically literate.

It is no exaggeration to say the state of the world our children’s children inherit will depend on the choices we make now, and one of the critical choices will be how we will develop and use science in the service of society. As we approach the 2008 U.S. presidential election, there is a ground-swell within the American scientific community in support of a presidential science debate. While the idea of politicians talking science might have minority appeal, the consequences of bad science policy will have a major impact — and one that will be felt much sooner than the end of the century or even the end of the next term of office.

The end of the 21st century might look a long way off. But it is the choices we make now that will determine the consequences our grandchildren and their children are faced with. 20th century approaches to science got us a long way, but they lack what it takes to address the challenges now facing us. Nanotechnology and other emerging technologies that hold the seeds of future will not and cannot be sustained by 20th century thinking. Instead, we need a 21st century approach to science to get us through the next one hundred years — and we need it sooner rather than later.

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The full August in the Archives 2010 series can be browsed here

As scientists create the first synthetic cell, the future safety of synthetic biology will depend on sound science

Andrew Maynard — Wed, 26 May 2010 15:34:34 +0000

Last week’s announcement from the J. Craig Venter Institute that scientists had created the first-ever synthetic cell was a profoundly significant point in human history, and marked a turning point in our quest to control the natural world. But the ability to use this emerging technology wisely is already being dogged by fears that we have embarked down a dangerous and morally dubious path.

It’s no surprise therefore that, hot on the heels of last week’s announcement, President Obama called for an urgent study to identify appropriate ethical boundaries and minimize possible risks associated with the breakthrough.

This was a bold and important move on the part of the White House. But its success will lie in ensuring the debate over risks in particular is based on sound science, and not sidetracked by groundless speculation.

The new “synthetic biology” epitomized by the Venter Institute’s work – in essence the ability to design new genetic code on computers and then “download” it into living organisms – heralds a new era of potentially transformative technology innovation. As if to underline this, the US House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce will be hearing testimony from Craig Venter and others on the technology’s potential on May 27th – just days after last week’s announcement. But the technology also raises serious ethical and safety concerns: Is it right and proper to meddle with the fundamental basis of life? What happens if the technology gets into the wrong hands? And what might occur when synthetic life meets the natural world?

Questions like these have challenged scientists, ethicists and decision makers for many years, and with good reason – our headlong charge into advanced genetic manipulation is taking us into uncharted and uncertain territory. But the breakthroughs made by Craig Venter and his team place a new urgency on developing policies, ethics and research strategies in support of safe and acceptable synthetic biology.

The ethics in particular surrounding synthetic biology are far from clear; the ability to custom-design the genetic code that resides in and defines all living organisms challenges our very notions of what is right and what is acceptable. Which is no doubt why President Obama wasted no time in charging the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues to look into the technology.

But in placing ethics so high up the agenda, my fear is that more immediate safety issues might end up being overlooked.

It’s not that safety isn’t on the radar – there is already tremendous speculation over the potential impacts of synthetic biology. But with one or two exceptions (including work from the J. Craig Venter Institute), there seems little science behind many of these conjectures. And actions based on speculation alone may endanger the tremendous good that could come from this rapidly emerging technology, while potentially opening the door to unintended consequences.

Rather, scientists, policy makers and developers urgently need to consider how synthetic biology might legitimately lead to people and the environment being endangered, and how this is best avoided.

What we need is a science-based dialogue on potential emergent risks that present new challenges, the plausibility of these risks leading to adverse impacts, and the magnitude and nature of the possible harm that might result. Only then will we be able to develop a science-based foundation on which to build a safe technology.

Synthetic biology is still too young to second-guess whether artificial microbes will present new risks; whether bio-terror or bio-error will result in harmful new pathogens; or whether blinkered short-cuts will precipitate catastrophic failure. But the sheer momentum and audacity of the technology will inevitably lead to new and unusual risks emerging.

And this is precisely why the safety dialogue needs to be grounded in science now, before it becomes entrenched in speculation.

In six months’ time, the President’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues will be presenting President Obama with its findings and recommendations on the implications of synthetic biology. Hopefully as well as grappling with the ethics of nanotechnology, their recommendations will also address the potential and plausible risks associated with the technology, and the science that is needed to ensure its safe development and use.

Because without sound science guiding the safety dialogue, there is every chance that synthetic biology will be derailed by mistrust, misinformation and misunderstanding.

And if this happens, it’s hard to see how anyone can win.

Deja vu and synthetic biology – will we learn the lessons of nanotech and genetic modification?

Hilary Sutcliffe — Tue, 25 May 2010 11:20:42 +0000

A guest blog by Hilary Sutcliffe, Director of MATTER, a UK think tank which explores how new technologies can work for us all.

The other day, I wrote a piece on the implications of synthetic biology where I suggested that we “need to place discussions on a science basis, and not get over-distracted by ethical hand-wringing.” It was a bit of a provocative statement – intentionally so – so I was pleased to see Hilary Sutcliffe pick up on it in the comments and push back against the implication that the ethics of synbio might not be as important as some think. Given the relevance of her comments, I thought they deserved their own guest blog – so here they are – AM.

“Ethical hand-wringing”? Hmm, I don’t think you were quite meaning this as I have interpreted it Andrew, but I have to disagree with your point in your Synthetic Biology Blog on the ethical hand-wringing, I think we should be distracting ourselves quite a lot with Ethical Hand-Wringing while the scientists are getting on with creating their new organisms, especially considering ‘what we understand is secondary to what we can do’, as you said.

I was at the Royal Society’s Synthetic Biology Stakeholder meeting which was shown by BBC Newsnight last week, (my Mum and I spotted me fleetingly in the corner!) and this and other recent synbio events gave me many a déjà vu moment – had I accidentally gone to a nano meeting?

There are many similarities between the development of genetic modification (GM) and nanotechnologies which can be learned in the development of synthetic biology. Time is of the essence – GM and nano were pretty much already in the shops when we started to take action, but here perhaps we can get our act together a bit sooner.

Here are quick observations on my déjà vu moments and lessons from nano and GM that may apply. This is not an exhaustive list, just my quick on-the-hoof thoughts in response to the limited information I have:

This is just an evolution of….. what’s all the fuss about? – ‘But it’s just an extension of GM’, ‘it’s just an extension of systems biology’, ‘it’s not actually anything really different’, ‘it’s an evolution of what we have been doing for years’. Hello?! Whether that is true or not from a scientific point of view, much like nano when you are close to it, that is not the point. As the The Economist points out in its editorial this week, ‘…whatever the rational pleadings of physics and chemistry, there exists a sense that biology is different, is more than just the sum of atoms moving about and reacting with one another, is somehow infused with a divine spark, a vital essence’. That has always been the line from nano scientists too, perhaps with even more validity. But to the lay person, or the sceptic, it looks dismissive and rather suspicious. So though it is perhaps reasonable from a scientific point of view, I would suggest that synthetic biologists kill that ‘line of defence’, it won’t work and it never worked for nano either. Instead of calming fears, in fact it often has the opposite effect of raising further concern in the non-expert.

‘But first we need a definition’: Aaaahhhhh, nnnnoooooo! Guess what, there is no definition, and I had a big déjà vu moment here – the conversation was IDENTICAL to the many I have had about nano over the years! Standards makers, regulators, synbiologists, whoever – get this sorted. This has been a very divisive issue for nano – some say deliberately engineered – so pleeeeese address this question as soon as possible. I may be wrong, but there doesn’t seem to be a concerted international effort on this at the moment, there needs to be, now. An idea – call up some of the nano people and find out how they did it (as slowly and tortuously as possible) and then do it differently!

Governance – this does seem to be considered of real importance and there is work going on worldwide on this, though it appears in academia, rather than a concerted international effort – though I may be wrong. Five Academies – sister/brother orgs to the Royal Society – are meeting soon to discuss synbio, and this will be top of the list. Obviously we need to do much better with this than we have on nano. The Venter Institute/MIT/CSIS prepared a interesting paper on Options for Governance; in the UK, Imperial/LSE/BIOS have a Center for Synthetic Biology and Innovation group which is doing some work sponsored by the Royal Society which looks interesting; and there are other experts in universities across the world doing their own work. But the BIG lesson for me from nano, which, with the potential for serious ‘bioerrors and bioterrors’, is even more important for synbio, is to get an international effort underway, ASAP, coordinated by a group such as the UN or OECD. I have a vision of a UN/World Economic Forum/World Social Forum joint effort. How unlikely is that, but perhaps worth a try? Our Responsible Nano Code was the right document, but the wrong process. Too British (despite the fact that all our businesses on the Working Group were multinational). A very credible international process is very important here!

‘The current regulation is fit for purpose, we don’t need any more’. This may actually be the case in this instance, but the time spent arguing about definitions with nano has slowed down the potential evaluation of the need for regulation and, some argue, given us some regulation which is not really fit for purpose. Again, an authoritative, multi-stakeholder process of regulatory evaluation needs to be underway now as part of the governance development process.

Get business and science working together from the start. In nano there were and still are parallel discussions going on with businesses and scientists in separate silos. We really need to do things differently for synbio. It is at the application end where the health, safety and environment impacts and social and ethical issues really hit, and business and science need both need to understand and participate in this. If the governance area gets done by the Science Academies alone, this is unlikely to happen. We need to find ways of making those connections with business early and making them stick.

Ethical Hand-Wringing and public engagement. I have been encouraged by the calls on all sides for ethical debate, public engagement and what I think of as Ethical Hand-Wringing! The ethical dilemmas in this are quite complicated, with vested interests on all sides and we need a serious commitment from governments, scientists and businesses to communicate clearly at all stages and engage all citizens in this discussion. However, we do need more than the usual useful and interesting sets of focus groups reaching a few hundred people. That is not really a debate on synthetic biology, it’s market research. Obviously synbioandme.org (yes I have bagged the domain) would be a start! But I have come to the conclusion that we need to have mass communication and mass engagement if we are to allow citizens to understand and participate in this discussion. This is tricky and we need to be much more innovative this time round. And I don’t see much sign of that at the moment, though it is early days. We made some inroads with nano, (fingers crossed for Nano&me being funded!) and the Dutch are doing a very interesting mass communication/engagement job on nano (check out the Nano Podium website). Though of course as we are all broke, it won’t be happening anytime soon!

But what do we want it for – where’s the overarching vision? A participant at the RS meeting made a very important point, which for me is the really big question. We in the UK do these Big Important Inquiries (e.g. the recent Bioengineering report) where the government explores the potential for a technology with experts from the field in question and lo and behold, they say it is really important and should be given lots more funding! But where is the top level independent vision and strategy which explores the UK’s approach to its big issues – energy, health, poverty, the economy, for example – and looks at which technologies could be used to solve which problems? Synbio, nano, GM, irradiation, IT, nano/bio/info/cogno may or may not be solutions to some of our most pressing problems, but unless applied research funding, economic incentives and commercial R&D is looked at in the context of other solutions, including non-technical ones, we can’t really be confident that we have got the right solutions to the right problems. In addition, this is the very best time and place to anchor the Ethical Hand-Wringing, it would make public debate mean something, influential and galvanise everyone – from scientists to businesses, NGOs to governments – to engage better about the benefits of their work and debate real issues which will be relevant now and in the future.

Other countries do it – this must be an important priority for the new UK government. We have time with synthetic biology to get this right, we just need to get going now.

This piece also appears on the MATTER blog

It’s life Craig, but not as we know it!

Andrew Maynard — Sat, 22 May 2010 21:22:35 +0000

Typical. One of the most anticipated technological breakthroughs in years hits the streets, and I’m completely off the web – holed up in an Italian hotel with no internet and no phone.

I’m talking of course about J. Craig Venter’s team’s breakthrough in synthesizing a living organism, almost from scratch – published in the journal Science on Thursday and speculated on by everyone from Nobel laureates to Vatican officials since…

Having followed synthetic biology for some time, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the announcement that Venter has finally created a synthetic organism. So I was more than a little frustrated to miss the first wave of commentaries on this week’s paper. And coming late to the game, I now find that “Venter Fatigue” is already setting in – making writing a blog that someone wants to read all the harder.

But there are issues and ideas that I think are still worth exploring here. So this is what I’m going to do:

For today, I thought I would recycle some stuff I wrote on what might be called “digital biology” last year – the potentially disruptive concept underlying synthetic biology that could well herald a new era of how we control the world we live in. Then, when I’ve had a bit more time to marshal my thoughts, I’ll aim to write something about risks and ethics – and especially the need to place discussions on a science basis, and not get over-distracted by ethical hand-wringing.

But back to “digital biology.” Last June, I wrote a piece about how our increasing control over matter at the nanoscale is transforming our ability to bend the world to our own ends. This is what I said about advances in manipulating DNA:

“Thirty years ago, the notion of controlling the code of life itself would have been laughable. Now it seems within reach.

Over the past few years, the ease with which genetic code can be sequenced has plummeted. It took 13 years for teams of scientists around the globe to first read the human genome – completing the project in 2001. In 2007, it took 2 months to sequence the genome of DNA-co-discoverer James Watson. And by 2013 it is likely that your personal genome could be read in the time it takes to boil an egg.

Of course, sequencing just reads the information – it doesn’t tell you how to use it. But here’s the important thing – sequencing genomes transforms the information from the physical domain to the digital domain, where it can be experimented with and engineered in new ways. While restricted to the physical world, there were always going to be limitations to how effectively we manipulated and controlled genetic material. In the digital domain, those limitations are gone. Cheap affordable sequencing is ushering in the age of digital biology.

However, playing around with genetic information on computers would be little more than a novelty if it weren’t for one further advance – the plummeting cost of DNA synthesis. This completes the loop between the physical and digital worlds. Now, once you have uploaded your genome into the computer and digitally enhanced it, the technology exists – or soon will – to download the new genome back into reality. It’s a technology that promises to enable an incredibly sophisticated level of genetic engineering. It allows brand new genetic code to be written on the computer, tested out in virtual space, then downloaded back into an organism. It even allows brand new organisms to be designed and created from scratch.

Synthetic biology - blurring the boundaries between the digital and physical domains

This possibility was pushed home last year when Craig Venter’s team synthesized the genome of a bacterium – Mycobacterium genitalium – from scratch. The team has yet to insert the synthesized DNA into a cell, and thus achieve – in effect – the creation of life from laboratory chemicals. But it seems only a matter of time before this is achieved.

We’re not quite there yet with the technology that will allow us to manipulate biology at the nanoscale. But it’s coming. And when it does, the level of control we have had over matter for the past ten centuries will seem like child’s play.”

This last week’s announcement takes the idea of designing living systems in the digital domain – then reading them back into reality – to the next level. Okay so you can split hairs and say that Venter and his crew didn’t technically synthesize life – they needed a few existing components (the machinery of the cell) to start with. But it really is splitting hairs, because the synthetic genome included the code that allowed this machinery to be constructed from scratch in subsequent generations of the organism. The breakthrough here was the ability to write the complete code for an organism on a computer, then translate it into a real, living, replicating life form.

Of course, there’s a ton of science that we don’t understand here – and given the enormous complexity of living organisms, it will be a long time before we come close to coming close to being able to design a completely new organism from scratch that does what we intend it to do. But that’s not the point here. What we are seeing is the beginning of a new technology, where what we understand is secondary to what we can do.

We may be a long way from perfectly designed organisms. But technology isn’t about perfection – it’s about doing something practical to achieve a tangible result. And to do that, you don’t always need to know why things work; just that they do work.

Without a doubt, this week’s announcement marks the dawn of a new technology – a technology that blurs the boundaries between the digital domain and living organisms. The state of the science may still be lacking. But then how often has a new technology been preceded by a mature science? Usually the technology and the science progress in tandem, and it’s not unusual for the technology to lead the science.

Add to this the incredible progress that has been made in engineering complex systems over the past 100 years – leading to technologies where the whole is greater than the contribution of any individual or team working on it – and the stage is set for Venter’s team’s achievements to profoundly influence how we interact with the living world.

The question is, are we up to handling it?

Note: apologies for an appallingly cliched title, although I was surprised no-one else has used it yet. Guess that’s what jetlag and internet deprivation do for you!

Ten emerging technology trends to watch over the next decade

Andrew Maynard — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 00:13:31 +0000

Ten years ago at the close of the 20th century, people the world over were obsessing about the millennium bug – an unanticipated glitch arising from an earlier technology. I wonder how clear it was then that, despite this storm in what turned out to be a rather small teacup, the following decade would see unprecedented advances in technology – the mapping of the human genome, social media, nanotechnology, space-tourism, face transplants, hybrid cars, global communications, digital storage, and more. Looking back, it’s clear that despite a few hiccups, emerging technologies are on a roll – one that’s showing no sign of slowing down.

So what can we expect as we enter the second decade of the twenty first century? What are the emerging technology trends that are going to be hitting the headlines over the next ten years?

Here’s my list of the top ten technologies I think are worth watching. I’m afraid that, as with all crystal ball gazing, it’s bound to be flawed. Yet as I work on the opportunities and challenges of emerging technologies, these do seem to be areas that are ripe for prime time.

Geoengineering

2009 was the year that geoengineering moved from the fringe to the mainstream. The idea of engineering the climate on a global scale has been around for a while. But as the penny has dropped that we may be unable – or unwilling – to curb carbon dioxide emissions sufficiently to manage global warming, geoengineering has risen up the political agenda. My guess is that the next decade will see the debate over geoengineering intensify. Research will lead to increasingly plausible and economically feasible ways to tinker with the environment. At the same time, political and social pressure will grow – both to put plans into action (whether multi- or unilaterally), and to limit the use of geoengineering. The big question is whether globally-coordinated efforts to develop and use the technology in a socially and politically responsible way emerge, or whether we end up with an ugly – and potentially disastrous – free for all.

Smart grids

It may not be that apparent to the average consumer, but the way that electricity is generated, stored and transmitted is under immense strain. As demand for electrical power grows, a radical rethink of the power grid is needed if we are to get electricity to where it is needed, when it is needed. And the solution most likely to emerge as the way forward over the next ten years is the Smart Grid. Smart grids connect producers of electricity to users through an interconnected “intelligent” network. They allow centralized power stations to be augmented with – and even replaced by – distributed sources such as small-scale wind farms and domestic solar panels. They route power from where there is excess being generated to where there is excess demand. And they allow individuals to become providers as well as consumers – feeding power into the grid from home-installed generators, while drawing from the grid when they can’t meet their own demands. The result is a vastly more efficient, responsive and resilient way of generating and supplying electricity. As energy demands and limits on greenhouse gas emissions hit conventional electricity grids over the next decade, expect to see smart grids get increasing attention.

Radical materials

Good as they are, most of the materials we use these days are flawed – they don’t work as well as they could. And usually, the fault lies in how the materials are structured at the atomic and molecular scale. The past decade has seen some amazing advances in our ability to engineer materials with increasing precision at this scale. The result is radical materials – materials that far outperform conventional materials in their strength, lightness, conductivity, ability to transmit heat, and a whole host of other characteristics. Many of these are still at the research stage. But as demands for high performance materials continue to increase everywhere from medical devices to advanced microprocessors and safe, efficient cars to space flight, radical materials will become increasingly common. In particular, watch out for products based on carbon nanotubes. Commercial use of this unique material has had it’s fair share of challenges over the past decade. But I’m anticipating many of these will be overcome over the next ten years, allowing the material to achieve at least some of it’s long-anticipated promise.

Synthetic biology

Ten years ago, few people had heard of the term “synthetic biology.” Now, scientists are able to synthesize the genome of a new organism from scratch, and are on the brink of using it to create a living bacteria. Synthetic biology is about taking control of DNA – the genetic code of life – and engineering it, much in the same way a computer programmer engineers digital code. It’s arisen in part as the cost of reading and synthesizing DNA sequences has plummeted. But it is also being driven by scientists and engineers who believe that living systems can be engineered in the same way as other systems. In many ways, synthetic biology represents the digitization of biology. We can now “upload” genetic sequences into a computer, where they can be manipulated like any other digital data. But we can also “download” them back into reality when we have finished playing with them – creating new genetic code to be inserted into existing – or entirely new – organisms. This is still expensive, and not as simple as many people would like to believe – we’re really just scratching the surface of the rules that govern how genetic code works. But as the cost of DNA sequencing and synthesis continues to fall, expect to see the field advance in huge leaps and bounds over the next decade. I’m not that optimistic about us cracking how the genetic code works in great detail by 2020 – the more we learn at the moment, the more we realize we don’t know. However, I have no doubt that what we do learn will be enough to ensure synthetic biology is a hot topic over the next decade. In particular, look out for synthesis of the first artificial organism, the development and use of “BioBricks” – the biological equivalent of electronic components – and the rise of DIY-biotechnology.

Personal genomics

Closely related to the developments underpinning synthetic biology, personal genomics relies on rapid sequencing and interpretation of an individual’s genetic sequence. The Human Genome Project – completed in 2001 – cost taxpayers around $2.7 billion dollars, and took 13 years to complete. In 2007, James Watson’s genome was sequenced in 2 months, at a cost of $2 million. In 2009, Complete Genomics were sequencing personal genomes at less than $5000 a shot. $1000 personal genomes are now on the cards for the near future – with the possibility of substantially faster/cheaper services by the end of the decade. What exactly people are going to do with all these data is anyone’s guess at this point – especially as we still have a long way to go before we can make sense of huge sections of the human genome. Add to this the complication of epigenetics, where external factors lead to changes in how genetic information is decoded which can pass from generation to generation, and and it’s uncertain how far personal genomics will progress over the next decade. What aren’t in doubt though are the personal, social and economic driving forces behind generating and using this information. These are likely to underpin a growing market for personal genetic information over the next decade – and a growing number of businesses looking to capitalize on the data.

Bio-interfaces

Blurring the boundaries between individuals and machines has long held our fascination. Whether it’s building human-machine hybrids, engineering high performance body parts or interfacing directly with computers, bio-interfaces are the stuff of our wildest dreams and worst nightmares. Fortunately, we’re still a world away from some of the more extreme imaginings of science fiction – we won’t be constructing the prototype of Star Trek Voyager’s Seven of Nine anytime soon. But the sophistication with which we can interface with the human body is fast reaching the point where rapid developments should be anticipated. As a hint of things to come, check out the Luke Arm from Deka (founded by Dean Kamen). Or Honda’s work on Brain Machine Interfaces. Over the next decade, the convergence of technologies like Information Technology, nanoscale engineering, biotechnology and neurotechnology are likely to lead to highly sophisticated bio-interfaces. Expect to see advances in sensors that plug into the brain, prosthetic limbs that are controlled from the brain, and even implants that directly interface with the brain. My guess is that some of the more radical developments in bio-interfaces will probably occur after 2020. But a lot of the groundwork will be laid over the next ten years.

Data interfaces

The amount of information available through the internet has exploded over the past decade. Advances in data storage, transmission and processing have transformed the internet from a geek’s paradise to a supporting pillar of 21st century society. But while the last ten years have been about access to information, I suspect that the next ten will be dominated by how to make sense of it all. Without the means to find what we want in this vast sea of information, we are quite literally drowning in data. And useful as search engines like Google are, they still struggle to separate the meaningful from the meaningless. As a result, my sense is that over the next decade we will see some significant changes in how we interact with the internet. We’re already seeing the beginnings of this in websites like Wolfram Alpha that “computes” answers to queries rather than simply returning search hits, or Microsoft’s Bing, which helps take some of the guesswork out of searches. Then we have ideas like The Sixth Sense project at the MIT Media Lab, which uses an interactive interface to tap into context-relevant web information. As devices like phones, cameras, projectors, TV’s, computers, cars, shopping trolleys, you name it, become increasingly integrated and connected, be prepared to see rapid and radical changes in how we interface with and make sense of the web.

Solar power

Is the next decade going to be the one where solar power fulfills its promise? Quite possibly. Apart from increased political and social pressure to move towards sustainable energy sources, there are a couple of solar technologies that could well deliver over the next few years. The first of these is printable solar cells. They won’t be significantly more efficient than conventional solar cells. But if the technology can be scaled up and some teething difficulties resolved, they could lead to the cost of solar power plummeting. The technology is simple in concept – using relatively conventional printing processes and special inks, solar cells could be printed onto cheap, flexible substrates; roll to roll solar panels at a fraction of the cost of conventional silicon-based units. And this opens the door to widespread use. The second technology to watch is solar-assisted reactors. Combining mirror-concentrated solar radiation with some nifty catalysts, it is becoming increasingly feasible to convert sunlight into other forms of energy at extremely high efficiencies. Imagine being able to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using sunlight and an appropriate catalyst for instance, then recombine them to reclaim the energy on-demand – all at minimal energy loss. Both of these solar technologies are poised to make a big impact over the next decade.

Nootropics

Drugs that enhance mental ability – increasingly referred to as nootropics – are not new. But their use patterns are. Drugs like ritalin, donepezil and modafinil are increasingly being used by students, academics and others to give them a mental edge. What is startling though is a general sense that this is acceptable practice. Back in June I ran a straw poll on 2020 Science to gauge attitudes to using nootropics. Out of 207 respondents, 153 people (74%) either used nootropics, or would consider using them on a regular or occasional basis. In April 2009, an article in the New Yorker reported on the growing use of “neuroenhancing drugs” to enhance performance. And in an informal poll run by Nature in April 2008, 1 in 5 respondents claimed “they had used drugs for non-medical reasons to stimulate their focus, concentration or memory.” Unlike physical performance-enhancing drugs, it seems that the social rules for nootropics are different. There are even some who suggest that it is perhaps unethical not to take them – that operating to the best of our mental ability is a personal social obligation. Of course this leads to a potentially explosive social/technological mix, that won’t be diffused easily. Over the next ten years, I expect the issue of nootropics will become huge. There will be questions on whether people should be free to take these drugs, whether the social advantages outweigh the personal advantages, and whether they confer an unfair advantage to users by leading to higher grades, better jobs, more money. But there’s also the issue of drugs development. If a strong market for nootropics emerges, there is every chance that new, more effective drugs will follow. Then the question arises – who gets the “good” stuff, and who suffers as a result? Whichever way you look at it, the 2010′s are set to be an interesting decade for mind-enhancing substances.

Cosmeceuticals

Cosmetics and pharmaceuticals inhabit very different worlds at the moment. Pharmaceuticals typically treat or prevent disease, while cosmetics simply make you look better. But why keep the two separate? Why not develop products that make you look good by working with your body, rather than simply covering it? The answer is largely due to regulation – drugs have to be put through a far more stringent set of checks and balances that cosmetics before entering the market, and rightly so. But beyond this, there is enormous commercial potential in combining the two, especially as new science is paving the way for externally applied substances to do more than just beautify. Products that blur the line are already available – in the US for instance, sunscreens and anti dandruff shampoos are considered drugs. And the cosmetics industry regularly use the term “cosmeceutical” to describe products with medicinal or drug-like properties. Yet with advances in synthetic chemistry and nanoscale engineering, it’s becoming increasingly possible to develop products that do more than just lead to “cosmetic” changes. Imagine products that make you look younger, fresher, more beautiful, by changing your body rather than just covering up flaws and imperfections. It’s a cosmetics company’s dream – one shared by many of their customers I suspect. The dam that’s preventing many such products at the moment is regulation. But if the pressure becomes too great – and there’s a fair chance it will over the next ten years – this dam is likely to burst. And when it does, cosmeceuticals are going to hit the scene big-time.

So those are my ten emerging technology trends to watch over the next decade. But what happened to nanotechnology, and what other technologies were on my shortlist?

Nanotech has been a dominant emerging technology over the past ten years. But in many ways, it’s a fake. Advances in the science of understanding and manipulating matter at the nanoscale are indisputable, as are the early technology outcomes of this science. But nanotechnology is really just a convenient shorthand for a whole raft of emerging technologies that span semiconductors to sunscreens, and often share nothing more than an engineered structure that is somewhere between 1 – 100 nanometers in scale. So rather than focus on nanotech, I decided to look at specific technologies which I think will make a significant impact over the next decade. Perhaps not surprisingly though, many of them depend in some way on working with matter at nanometer scales.

In terms of the emerging technologies shortlist, it was tough to whittle this down to ten trends. My initial list included batteries, decentralized computing, biofuels, stem cells, cloning, artificial intelligence, robotics, low earth orbit flights, clean tech, neuroscience and memristors – there are many others that no doubt could and should have been on it. Some of these I felt were likely to reach their prime sometime after the next decade. Others I felt didn’t have as much potential to shake things up and make headlines as the ones I chose. But this was a highly subjective and personal process. I’m sure if someone else were writing this, the top ten list would be different.

And one final word. Many of the technologies I’ve highlighted reflect an overarching trend: convergence. Although not a technology in itself, synergistic convergence between different areas of knowledge and expertise will likely dominate emerging technology trends over the next decade. Which means that confident as I am in my predictions, the chances of something completely different, unusual and amazing happening are… pretty high!

Update, 12/27/09 Something’s been bugging me, and I’ve just realized what it is – in my original list of ten, I had smart drugs, but in the editing process they somehow got left by the wayside! As I don’t want to go back and change the ten emerging technology trends I ended up posting, they will have to be a bonus. As it is, drug delivery timelines are so long that I’m not sure how many smart drugs will hit the market before 2020. But when they do, they will surely mark a turning point in therapeutics. These are drugs that are programmed to behave in various ways. The simplest are designed to accumulate around disease sites, then destroy the disease on command – gold shell nanoparticles fit the bill here, preferentially accumulating around tumors then destroying them by heating up when irradiated with infrared radiation. More sophisticated smart drugs are in the pipeline though that are designed to seek out diseased cells, provide local diagnostics, then release therapeutic agents on demand. The result is targeted disease treatment that leads to significantly greater efficacy at substantially lower doses. Whether or not these make a significant impact over the next decade, they are definitely a technology to watch.

Update 12/29/09 Which emerging technologies do you thing will trend over the next decade? Join the discussion on the 2020 Science Facebook page.

Reversing the Technological Dilemma

Guest — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:00:38 +0000

By George Kimbrell, International Center for Technology Assessment, and the Center for Food Safety

A guest blog in the Alternative Perspectives on Technology Innovation series

Andrew asked us to write about “how technological innovation should contribute to life in the 21^st century.” Technological innovation is often blindly referred to as “progress.” The question is — progress towards what?

We live in the age of technology. In past generations, most people spent the majority of their time in nature, and then in later years more often in social settings. In the modern world, most of us spend an ever-increasing amount of time in an interconnected web of machines. I’d like to say I’m writing this on a riverside, but unfortunately I’m not – I’m in my office typing on my laptop, with my email open on a different web browser.

What currently drives this technological innovation, this technological bubble that defines our age? In modern society, self-interest, greater productivity, greater consumption, the laws of supply and demand and the commoditization of the world are all drivers. This economic system, which has now succeeded in global hegemony, dictates all our social interactions. Far from being a natural state of being, it is of course only as old as the United States (Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations was published in 1776) and not based on any natural law. In early societies, the market system was never the method by which basic societal problems were addressed; rather the marketplace was delegated only a limited role by our ancestors compared to their cultural and religious beliefs and social patterns. Nature (not to mention labor), although treated as such, is not a commodity. Nature does not respond to supply and demand. The old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest will not speed up their growth rate to address increased demand. More fundamentally, the natural world has intrinsic, incalculable value above and far beyond “market values”. Even the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) recognizes this truth, in that it prohibits the extermination of species no matter how lucrative the activity that is causing the killing.

Not only are the current dominant economic systems and their intertwined technological systems at odds with the ecological cycles of the natural world, but they are also actively and quickly eviscerating the planet. We are exponentially reducing the earth’s capacities in every natural realm: land, air, water, and everything in between, through ozone depletion, acid rain, species extinction, deforestation, and desertification. By commodifying nature to match our own systems we are threatening the planets’ survival and our own. Global warming illustrates this conclusion best: Our industrial technologies have created the first global environmental crisis in human history.

We now face what is known as the technological dilemma—the “developed” portion of the world’s population has become dependent on the technological environment. Yet the same technologies that support life for the richest part of human population are threatening the very viability of life on Earth. Even former President George W. Bush said we are “addicted to oil.” And this addiction to these unhealthy systems of production is destroying our world. To paraphrase and apply the wisdom of Rowlf the Dog from the Muppets to market-based mass consumerism: we can’t live with our technologies, and we can’t imagine living without them.

These are not new revelations. And there are really only two options. Forty years ago, writers and leaders began urging that we institute “appropriate technologies” in sync with the cycles of nature, rather than the mega-global-techno-systems causing planetary and human peril. Attorneys and policymakers have succeeded in passing and utilizing laws that would limit the impacts of capital and industrial systems, like the ESA. Scientists began to develop more holistic visions of their vocations. This approach/option is a step toward addressing economic development within the context of rather than at the expense of our global environment and the society which depends upon it.

But others too have come to the conclusion that our current technology is not compatible with life. They have foreseen the growing conflict between globalization, mass consumption, and the laws of nature. However, their solution to the dilemma is very different. Rather than change our economics and technology to better comport with the needs of living things, corporations and governments began to engineer life itself to better accommodate the market system and the technologies upon which it is predicated. Ignoring the constraints of the natural world, living systems are to be remade, engineered at the genetic and molecular level to further the necessities of the technological age.

What’s the result of this worldview? You probably see where this is going. Genetic engineering, or recombinant DNA technology, is seen as the tool by which we can alter life at the genetic level to better fit industrial production systems and become a technological commodity. Cloning is seen as the tool by which we can emulate the factory model of identical production for life forms. Rather than redesigning industrial agriculture to fit the animal’s natural behavior, we are redesigning the animal to fit industrial agriculture. Because patent control spurred production for products, we must now patent plants, animals, and human genes and cells. Nanotechnology is a means by which we can control and manipulate matter at the atomic and molecular level to enhance industrial processes. Lastly, synthetic biology is a means by which we combine several of these tools to create and design entirely new life forms to perform our industrial tasks. Even Dr. Frankenstein was cautious enough to not make his creature a mate; “synthetic biologists,” on the other hand, want their creatures to reproduce before systems are in place to control them.

Got environmental problems? Global warming does not to be addressed by stopping harmful greenhouse gas emissions and putting in place strictures to address systemic problems; instead, we should geo-engineer the planet to ameliorate the problem, or genetically engineer plants to be more drought- tolerant or trees to grow faster. Chemical pollution causing environmental and health hazards? We do not need to reduce our use of harmful pesticides; instead, we should engineer production plants to be immune to them. Pigs and chickens not amenable to horrific close-confinement factory farming? Don’t encourage organic and humane farming and change the systems by making industrial agriculture internalize the true costs of its production; instead, genetically alter the animals to withstand extreme confinement and diseases that proliferate therein. Wild salmon runs dying out? Don’t remove the dams and stop the pollution, farm them and genetically re-engineer them to grow faster in crowded, polluted ponds.

So where does that leave us? Well, first, we must recognize and address the underlying philosophy and economy that drives and controls technological innovation. An order of magnitude in change is required; we must institute a paradigm-shift to a system of governance and life that is based on coexistence with and benefit to natural systems: An earth-centered system. As Thomas Berry explains in The Dream of Earth, we must move from the technological age to the ecological age. We must begin treating ourselves and the natural world as part of an interconnected web; stop thinking in straight lines and start thinking in circles. “Progress” must include the natural as well as the human world, encouraging mutually enhancing human-earth relationships. Human technologies should function in an integral relationship with earth technologies, not in a despotic manner. Nature, over hundreds of millions of years and through an infinite number of experiments, worked out ecosystems that were already flourishing abundantly when we came to exist. How can technological innovation help us determine how we can best be present in this context? Modern society must treat life and the natural world as the spiritual force it is. There must be a mystique of rivers if we are ever going to restore the purity of our rivers. This is not a new idea, it is actually the oldest. Is this an idealized vision? Perhaps, but it’s a considerably less naive world vision that that which claims we can sustain our current industrial system.

Can technological innovation help us get there? If it changes the course current path we’re going down, if it helps stop the bleeding. If it breaks away from being driven by corporate profits, and instead helps spread knowledge, wisdom, and awareness. If it helps us flesh out and establish an earth-centered system to replace the current oppressive paradigm. We must evolve our technological systems so that they are democratic and responsive to us, that we are responsible for them, and so that they comport with nature and with life forms on the earth. We can dust off the old ways and make them the new again, making them more seductive and more logical than our current destructive ways. Only with these changes will technological innovation properly serve the planet and enhance, as well as extend, a meaningful human experience.

___________________

George A. Kimbrell is a staff attorney for the nonprofit Center for Food Safety (CFS) and its parent organization International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA), based in San Francisco, California. He practices environmental and administrative law with a focus on legal and policy issues related to new and emerging technologies. For ICTA, he works on matters involving nanotechnology, biotechnology and climate change technologies. For CFS, he covers genetically engineered food and crops, organic standards, factory farming and aquaculture.

Mr. Kimbrell received his J.D. magna cum laude from Lewis and Clark Law School and has a B.A. from the College of William and Mary. Prior to joining ICTA and CFS, he completed a clerkship on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

I do not here officially represent my organizations or clients. The views discussed herein owe much to the ideas and writings of others. For more detailed discussion of many of these issues, please see, inter alia, Andrew Kimbrell, Salmon Economics (and other lessons), Twenty-Third Annual E.F. Schumacher Lectures, Stockbridge, Mass. (Oct 2003).

Nanotechnology on Twit TV’s Dr. Kiki’s Science Hour

Andrew Maynard — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:47:49 +0000

Just a quick post (at least, as far as the text goes). Last week, I had the pleasure of appearing on Twit TV’s Dr. Kiki’s Science Hour with Kristen Sanford and Leo Laporte. The conversation covered nanotechnology from every conceivable angle. I should have known with Leo’s opening question – asking what I thought of Eric Drexler’s ideas – that we were in for a fun ride!

As Kiki and Leo managed to get in a whole bunch of questions about what nanotech is (and isn’t), where and how it’s being used, what’s so great about it, and what some of the possible barriers to it’s development are, I thought it worth posting the show here.

I should warn you, it’s long, running just shy of 70 minutes. The full show can be streamed below. But for anyone who wants to fast forward through the boring bits or watch it at their leisure, it can also be downloaded here. [Quicktime, 199 MB]

The show was recorded by the folks at On Demand Twit Video, and is reproduced here under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada Creatives Commons license:

Team ODTV / CC BY-NC-SA 2.5

A cautious thumbs up for synthetic biology from the UK public

Andrew Maynard — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:26:38 +0000

According to a new public opinion survey from the UK Royal Academy of Engineering, the great British public is cautiously enthusiastic about the emerging field of synthetic biology.

Last summer, the Washington DC-based Synthetic Biology Project published a survey of US awareness and attitudes towards synbio. The new study builds on that work by taking a look what people in the UK make of synthetic biology. Drawing on a 1000-person strong phone survey and a more in-depth exploratory dialogue with 16 participants, it provides insight into current awareness of synthetic biology, potential public perception speed bumps, and some possible routes toward greater public engagement in the technology’s development.

: A word cloud of responses to the question “What comes to mind when I say synthetic biology.” From the RAE report.

I’ll probably write about the report in more depth at a later date—some of the recommendations from the dialogue are particularly interesting as is the process of empowering people to make informed recommendations on an emerging technology such as synthetic biology. But for now, I’ll limit myself to some initial impressions from reading the report:

The overall impression from reading the report is that people in the UK are cautiously optimistic about the future beneficial development and use of synthetic biology. However, this optimism is tempered by concerns over possible safety issues, unresponsive or inappropriate regulation, and fear-mongering in the media.

It is clear that the participants in the dialogue faced a steep learning curve when it came to synthetic biology, but that with help most of them were able to come up to speed on what the technology entailed, and what the potential implications were. None of the 16 dialogue group participants had previously heard of synthetic biology. In the telephone poll, only 33% of respondents had come across the term previously—the same level of awareness was found amongst US respondents the Wilson Center study. However, after two evenings of learning bout and discussing synthetic biology, a number of participants in the dialogue had a clear grasp of the essence of what synthetic biology is about, what it can potential be used for, and some of the challenges its development raises. It was noted though that there are next to no good sources of information available that provide a lay audience with clear information on synthetic biology.

Generally, people were excited about the potential applications of synthetic biology. Using re-programmed microbes to produce biofuels and medical drugs were seen as positive applications – with greater emphasis given to biofuels, as an application that had the potential to make a difference to a greater number of people in the near future. There was less enthusiasm and more concern expressed for applications that would lead to the release of modified microbes into the environment, such as might occur in pollution remediation.

Effective risk management was clearly a concern. Regulation was seen as important for the success of synthetic biology, but only if it didn’t stifle innovation. Participants generally felt that synthetic biology practiced by amateurs outside the confines and constraints of established organizations—garage biotech—is a bad thing, and should be discouraged.

There was concern that the media could undermine the development of synthetic biology by scaremongering, and that efforts are needed to educate and inform people about the technology – thus allowing informed impressions to be made that weren’t unduly influenced by the media. This may be a particularly British perspective given the state of science reporting in some UK media outlets. But I found it interesting that the dialogue participants were sufficiently enamored with synbio that they didn’t want the media to upset the cart here, while at the same time they (presumably) represented the readership that the UK media write for.

There didn’t seem to be much concern over scientists “playing God” and creating new life-forms. In fact—and this I found surprising—there seemed to be some question over whether engineered microbes were actually alive. Treating modified or new microbes as non-living commodities conveniently circumvents a number of ethical issues here. But I wonder whether this attitude will persist as synthetic biology develops. And if it does, I can’t help wondering whether this raises ethical issues in and of itself. In contrast to microbes, there seemed to be a consensus that tinkering with “higher” life forms was questionable.

There seemed to be strong support for the UK government investing in synthetic biology—along with some bemusement that Britain was already ahead of most other countries in the field.

Overall, these results should be seen as good news for synthetic biology. They suggest the opportunity exists for strong partnerships between members of the public and scientists, government and businesses in developing the field and translating it into useful applications. But there is also an underlying note of caution—get things wrong, and synthetic biology could become another genetically modified organisms fiasco—or worse.

The hope is that scientists, government and business learn from past mistakes, and work with regular people to develop synthetic biology in an acceptable, relevant and responsible way. This report is a great initial step toward doing this. It’ll be interesting to see what comes next.

Nanoscale control: Leveraging biology

Andrew Maynard — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:00:48 +0000

Part 6 of a series on rethinking science and technology for the 21st century

The story so far: We are facing an unprecedented confluence of three factors that are forcing us to rethink how we develop and use science and technology to the benefit of society. Coupling between our action’s and the Earth’s re-actions is more significant now than at any previous point in human history. Global Communications are dissolving previously rigid boundaries throughout society at a seemingly ever-increasing rate. And then there’s the third “C” – Control…

Not to put too fine a point on it, control is what science and technology are ultimately about. Science provides the tools for understanding how the world works; technology puts them to use. This is how it’s been for the past 10,000 years. So what’s different now? The answer is that we are finally getting down to being able to manipulate the basic building blocks of matter – atoms and molecules. Over the past 50 years we have made tremendous strides in being able to visualize and engineer materials at near-atomic scales. And by doing so we have opened the door to a vast array of technological advances that were the stuff of dreams just a few decades ago.

In the previous post in this series, I wrote about three defining features of nanoscale control – smallness, strangeness and sophistication. Here, I want to dwell a little more on the third of those – sophistication – as it is likely to underpin some of the more radical advances in science and technology over the next few years.

Three defining characteristics of controlling matter at the nanoscale

Over the past century, synthetic chemistry has changed the world. The ability to systematically combine atoms together to make new molecules has revolutionized the way we live – virtually everything we touch depends on synthesized chemicals in some way. Yet chemists are the first to admit that the number of chemicals that have so far been synthesized is minuscule compared to those just waiting to be discovered and made – although we appear to have had good control over the world of chemicals, we’ve only scratched the surface.

What if we had the tools to splice atoms and molecules together in new and innovative ways? What if we could go beyond text-book chemistry, and invent new molecules that behaved more like nanoscale machines? What if we could create systems of molecules that could self-replicate – just like biological systems, only better? All of these goals are coming within reach as scientists learn how to build new molecules atom by atom.

"Nano car" synthetic molecules, from the lab of Professor Jim Tour at Rice University

A particularly interesting example – more a proof of concept – comes from Professor Jim Tour’s lab at Rice University. Jim was interested in how some biological molecules carry out very physical tasks – like ferrying molecules from one place to another – and wondered whether totally artificial molecules could be invented that behaved in similar ways. The result was a molecule dubbed the nano car. Completely artificial, it consists of four “wheels” made of carbon-60 molecules, attached together with a chassis of organic molecules. What is significant is that the nano cars demonstrate thermally-induced directional motion on a surface – i.e. they are able in principle to ferry a payload of other molecules from point A to point B. Writing in Nanotechnology Law and Business in 2007, Tour noted:

The achievement with the nanocar was significant because it demonstrated for the first time structurally controlled directional movement on a surface due to rolling of the wheels rather than the common non-directional stick-slip motion of molecules on a substrate surface. The next goal of our project was to construct a nanomachine that can convert energy-inputs into controlled motion on a surface.

The nano car attempts to achieve something that occurs all the time in nature by painstakingly controlling how the various molecules that make it up are pieced together. But the example begs a question – if we can begin to replicate what living systems – DNA-based systems – do, through nanoscale control, how much more could be achieved by starting with DNA in the first place? The answer is – rather a lot.

One of the more interesting discoveries in biochemistry over the past several years has been that many molecules in living systems do their stuff on a physical as much as a chemical level. For instance, while the nano cars could potentially move molecules around on a surface, naturally occurring biological molecules exist that do this every day – nature has already evolved incredibly sophisticated systems that operate at the nanoscale. Knowing that natural “molecular motors” exist, scientists have been working hard to create their own biologically-based and biology-inspired motors.

Cartoon of an autonomous molecular motor, courtesy of Andrew Tuberfield.

One such motor is an autonomous “walker” designed and constructed by Andrew Tuberfield’s group at the University of Oxford. The molecule – which is DNA based – is designed to walk along a track constructed from DNA for as long as there is a supply of fuel – provided by a second set of engineered molecules. The idea is similar to that embodied in the nano car – an engineered molecule that mimics some of the features of living systems. But in this case the building blocks used – DNA-based molecules – allow a far more sophisticated device to be constructed. The walker consists of two asymmetric feet attached to a DNA track. Through random thermal motion, these feet are constantly lifting up from the track. However, because of the asymmetry of the molecule, the left foot is uniquely exposed to the surrounding environment when it becomes elevated. at this point, the researchers who designed the system engineered in two rather clever features. First, a purposely designed molecule – H1 in the diagram – attaches to the left foot and removes it from the track as the foot extents. The same cannot happen to the right foot because it is not accessible. Then, a second molecule – H2 – attaches to the H1-foot pair and removes the original H1 molecule, leaving just an unattached foot. At this point, one of two things can happen; the foot either attaches to the left. Or it re-attaches to the right. The probability of either happening is random. But as re-attaching to the left results in the molecule ending up exactly where it started, only re-attachment to the right ends up in the molecule taking a step – and the step is always in the same direction.

By using engineered biological parts and controlling their construction at the nanoscale, the researchers have created a molecule that can move along a predetermined track in a predetermined direction, for as long as track and fuel exist – a Brownian ratchet that converts random motion into directional movement. It may not seem a lot, but it is a tremendous step towards building nanoscale systems that begin to match what biology already does.

But this research raises a yet more intriguing question: If we can use biological parts to make non-biological motors through nanoscale engineering, can we get into the very workings of biology itself? Biology, after all, is built on nanoscale processes – from DNA to the proteins it encodes for. If we could control biology at the atomic and molecular level (and do it well), it would quite possibly one of the most transformative technological moves since the advent of agriculture.

Thirty years ago, the notion of controlling the code of life itself would have been laughable. Now it seems within reach.

The plummeting time to sequence the human genome

Over the past few years, the ease with which genetic code can be sequenced has plummeted. It took 13 years for teams of scientists around the globe to first read the human genome – completing the project in 2001. In 2007, it took 2 months to sequence the genome of DNA-co-discoverer James Watson. And by 2013 it is likely that your personal genome could be read in the time it takes to boil an egg.

Of course, sequencing just reads the information – it doesn’t tell you how to use it. But here’s the important thing – sequencing genomes transforms the information from the physical domain to the digital domain, where it can be experimented with and engineered in new ways. While restricted to the physical world, there were always going to be limitations to how effectively we manipulated and controlled genetic material. In the digital domain, those limitations are gone. Cheap affordable sequencing is ushering in the age of digital biology.

Schematic of the "digitization" of biology

However, playing around with genetic information on computers would be little more than a novelty if it weren’t for one further advance – the plummeting cost of DNA synthesis. This completes the loop between the physical and digital worlds. Now, once you have uploaded your genome into the computer and digitally enhanced it, the technology exists – or soon will – to download the new genome back into reality. It’s a technology that promises to enable an incredibly sophisticated level of genetic engineering. It allows brand new genetic code to be written on the computer, tested out in virtual space, then downloaded back into an organism. It even allows brand new organisms to be designed and created from scratch.

This possibility was pushed home last year when Craig Venter’s team synthesized the genome of a bacterium – Mycobacterium genitalium – from scratch. The team has yet to insert the synthesized DNA into a cell, and thus achieve – in effect – the creation of life form laboratory chemicals. But it seems only a matter of time before this is achieved.

January 2008 - Craig Venter's team synthesize the complete genome of a new organism from scratch

We’re not quite there yet with the technology that will allow us to manipulate biology at the nanoscale. But it’s coming. And when it does, the level of control we have had over matter for the past ten centuries will seem like child’s play.

Throw this level of potential control into the mix with the other two “C’s,” and you have all the ingredients for a step-change in what we can do, and what the consequences are – for good and for bad.

Next time: Confluence: Where communication, coupling and control collide.

Notes

Rethinking science and technology for the 21st century is a series of blogs drawing on a recent lecture given at the James Martin School in Oxford. This is a bit of an experiment—the serialization of a lecture, and a prelude to a more formal academic paper. But hopefully it will be both interesting and useful. I’ll be posting a “rethinking science and technology” blog every week or so, interspersed with the usual eclectic mix of stuff you’ve come to expect from 2020science.

Previously: Control at the nanoscale: Smallness, strangeness and sophistication.

Next: Confluence: Where communication, coupling and control collide.

Roll over nanotechnology, synthetic biology is coming!

Andrew Maynard — Mon, 18 May 2009 21:08:31 +0000

So you’re looking for a new technology concept—something that will stimulate research funding, make a buck or two, and maybe save the world—at least for another year or so. What do you need?

Here’s a quick checklist:

Something that’s revolutionary. Evolutionary change doesn’t hack it these days I’m afraid—your new technology needs to make a distinct break from the past—or at least, look as if it does.
Hype—and lots of it. A vision for how your technology will transform the world over the next ten to fifty years. If you can argue that civilization will collapse without the new tech, so much the better.
A focus on interdisciplinary research. Stove-piped technologies are so last century. To be hip and relevant in the 21st century, you need to be interdisciplinary. Fusions of two disciplines are good—more are better though. And if you can throw in a social science or two, better still.
Inter-agency collaboration. You know you are on to a winner when one government agency alone can’t cope with your idea.
An education crisis. As a rule of thumb, your new technology should be so out of the box that a whole new approach to education is needed to develop and sustain it.
Heartfelt concern for the possible downsides of the technology. Safe technologies aren’t sexy. Period. Actually, that’s not true, but there is an implicit assumption that any bold new technology concept will have a dark side—acknowledging this and working out how to handle it early on is de rigueur for the budding technology entrepreneur.
An intent to engage “the public.” Breathe easy—current evidence suggests that you don’t actually need to talk to “the public,” just act as if you want to. Of course, this approach may end up backfiring if you don’t move on to your next big idea fast enough.

OK so it’s a rather tongue in cheek list, but it does bear more than a passing resemblance to where nanotechnology—that doyenne of emerging technologies—was ten years ago. And it now seems to match up pretty well with the new emerging tech kid on the block: synthetic biology…

A couple of weeks ago, the UK Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) released a new report on the “scope, applications and implications” of synthetic biology. Reading through it, I couldn’t help experience a sense of déjà vu—the storyline is remarkably similar to how nanotechnology was being pitched at the end of the 1990’s (see for instance Vision for Nanotechnology R&D in the Next Decade from the Inter-agency Working Group on Nanotechnology—the precursor to the US National Nanotechnology Initiative. [PDF, 9.9 MB]) In fact reading it, I had the spine-tingling sense that I was looking at nanotechnology’s political successor here. It wasn’t so much the absence of any substantive references to nanotechnology—in spite of the rather significant lessons learned from the development of this technology over the past ten years—as the way in which the new technology was being pitched.

Holding the RAE report up to the New Technology Concept checklist, this is what you have:

Something that’s revolutionary. Check. “Synthetic biology could revolutionise a number of fields of engineering.”

Hype. Check. “Many commentators now believe that synthetic biology has the potential for major wealth generation by means of the development of major new industries, much as, for example the semi-conductor did in the last century, coupled to positive effects for health and the environment.”

A focus on interdisciplinary research. Check. “The coming together of engineering and biology that typifies synthetic biology means that it is, by nature, a multidisciplinary field of endeavour. Fundamental research requires collaboration between engineers, biologists, chemists and physicists, as well as social scientists and philosophers.”

Inter-agency collaboration. Check. “The elements set out above cut across several Government departments. A strategy would enable appropriate policies to be put in place that acknowledged their interdependency.”

An education crisis. Check. “The main challenge to providing training in synthetic biology is that its interdisciplinary nature does not fit naturally into the traditional university structure or the standard funding mechanisms.”

Heartfelt concern for the possible downsides of the technology. Check. “The development of synthetic biology brings with it a number of ethical and societal implications that must be identified and addressed.

An intent to engage “the public.” Check. “As well as an academic exploration of these issues by social scientists, ethicists and philosophers, early public dialogue is of the utmost importance to help promote listening and understanding of people’s hopes, expectations and concerns”

The RAE report actually has a lot to commend it. It provides a good account of what synthetic biology is all about. It makes the case reasonably well for greater UK investment in the technology. It even manages to outline many of the more prominent social and ethical concerns.

Yet I can’t help feeling that the report is naively outdated. Over the past ten years, we’ve learnt a lot about what works and what doesn’t when boosting a new technology. Nanotechnology was (still is) a technology concept grounded in science, but with a fair chunk of policy associated with it—a grand scheme to raise research dollars, create jobs and improve quality of life for people around the world. On balance it’s been a success so far, but with a steep learning curve that isn’t threatening to level out anytime soon.

Synthetic biology is also being pitched as a science-based grand scheme to raise research dollars, create jobs and improve quality of life for people around the world. This is fine—synthetic biology as a concept is pretty solid. But if the RAE report is to be believed, it is being promoted using an old and outdated model. Ten years ago, it might have looked fresh—now it just looks uninformed. For some reason, the lessons we are still learning with nanotechnology don’t seem to be translating across to synbio too well. Maybe it’s because of a genuine lack of awareness. Perhaps it’s intentional—with synthetic biology being seen as a competitive successor to nanotechnology. I don’t know. Either way, it doesn’t bode too well for the future of the synthetic biology enterprise.

The science and technology embedded in synthetic biology are important. But the hurdles the new technology faces to underpinning safe, successful and accepted innovations are substantial. Re-inventing old problems won’t help here. But leaning from similar experiences with other emerging technologies just might.

Rather than trying to roll nanotechnology out of its spot, perhaps its time for synthetic biology to do a bit of cozying up instead. There are, after all, more than enough problems needing technology-based solutions to go around. And I strongly suspect that, in this case, two metaphorical heads will be better than one in tackling them.

New life, old bottles: The video

Andrew Maynard — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:13:00 +0000

A five-minute primer on the promise and challenge of first-generation synthetic biology

As an addendum to the previous post on synthetic biology, the following interview from the Wilson Center provides a great overview of what synthetic biology is all about, and the potential challenges of ensuring its safe development and use:

For more information, check out the Synthetic Biology Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Are we ready for synthetic biology?

Andrew Maynard — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 10:00:42 +0000

A new report looks at the challenges of regulating first generation products of synthetic biology.

At the J. Craig Venter Institute, scientists are on the verge of creating a living organism from “dead” chemicals, by rebooting a microbe with a new—and completely artificially constructed—genome.

At the University of California Berkeley, researchers are modifying microbes to act as highly efficient chemical plants, by rewriting their DNA.

In Cambridge Massachusetts, amateur biologists are scoring cheap laboratory equipment off eBay and Craigs List, and constructing their own designer bugs.

While all over the world, hundreds of enthusiastic undergraduates are competing to systematically design and build new DNA-based biological systems and get them operating in living cells.

Synthetic biology—the systematic engineering of biological organisms from the DNA up—is a reality now, and is destined to grow into an incredibly powerful transformative technology over the next few years.

But can we handle it?

In amidst the many questions our accelerating ability to manipulate DNA raises is one of oversight: Are government agencies equipped to ensure the safety of new synthetic biology-related products and processes?

A new report by Mike Rodemeyer—formerly Executive Director of the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology—addresses exactly this question. Commissioned by the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, New life, old bottles takes a critical look at regulating the first-generation products of synthetic biology.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Rodemeyer concludes that once you peer under the hood (so to speak), there’s not a lot from a regulatory perspective that differentiates first generation synthetic biology from more traditional recombinant DNA (rDNA)-based technology. Which means that where things work for rDNA, they look pretty good for synbio.

Of course, this also means that where oversight of traditional biotech is flaky, things aren’t likely to be any easier for synthetic biology.

However, the report also suggests that synthetic biology may have the potential to stretch an already stressed system to breaking point at some point in the future. As it is, traditional biotechnology was shoehorned into a regulatory system within the US that was developed long before the practical consequences of DNA manipulation were understood. As a result (for example), genetically engineered organisms are currently regulated as new chemical substances by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Just in case you didn’t catch that: in simple terms, the DNA within a genetically modified organism is legally considered to be a new chemical, and thus is regulated as such. An elegant solution to fitting new technology into old rules, but one that may find run out of steam rather rapidly as synthetic biology hits its stride.

And the current regulatory framework doesn’t even begin to touch on developments that lie outside its traditional sphere of control—including a growing “biohacking” community.

Rodemeyer’s piece is more about setting out the issues and posing questions than providing solutions. And it does this extremely well. If you want aan excellent description of what synthetic biology is all about, the regulatory framework within which it is developing, or the challenges it presents to that framework, this is the report to read. It’s clear, it’s accessible, and it’s highly readable.

But if you insist on an overarching take-home message, it would be this (and these are my words, not his):

We are on the brink of a revolution in biotechnology that will make old biotech look like the fumblings of a toddler. And while we may have got away with squeezing new tech into old regulatory bottles in the past, this approach isn’t going to work for much longer! Rather, if synthetic biology is to grow into a mature, safe and accepted technology, some regulatory rethinking will be needed.

The old bottles, it seems, will last us a little longer. But at some point they are going to burst at the seams. And what then, if we don’t have bigger, better, more flexible containers handy?

A 2020 Science Taster

Andrew Maynard — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:00:43 +0000

Given the recent surge in 2020science readers (thanks to Lon S. Cohen at Mashable), I thought it about time I did a short retrospective—a taster for the type of stuff you can expect to read here. So here are five pieces from the past year that cover everything from nanotechnology to synthetic biology, and ethics to the trials of being on the scientific meeting circuit—all from the perspective of emerging technologies.

Enjoy!

Asbestos-like nanomaterials – should we be concerned? It seems that when the possible downsides of nanotechnology are broached, it doesn’t take long for the “A” word to surface. But what is the truth—if any—behind comparisons between nanomaterials and asbestos? From January 2009.

Nanotechnology—In bed with Madonna? How do you squeeze Madonna, John Kerry, nanotechnology and Elle magazine into the same blog? With difficulty is the correct answer I think, but somehow they all managed to appear together in this piece from April 2008.

Synthetic biology, ethics and the hacker culture. What the heck is synthetic biology, is “biopunk” a real word, and are the 21st century equivalents of computer hackers going to reconfigure life as we know it? I can’t promise any easy answers, but hopefully this post from June 2008 helps set the scene.

Geoengineering: Does it need a dose of geoethics? We’ve all heard of bioethics, but if the earth can be treated like one massive complex organism, do we need the planetary equivalent of bioethics—“geoethics” perhaps? From January 2009.

Enough meetings already! Ever get jealous of the scientific jet-set, swanning between “prestigious” speaking engagements in exotic places? Don’t bother—the reality is far from glamorous, as this post from May last year tries to capture. Fortunately, there are occasional compensations, albeit in unlikely forms!

Darwin, evolution, and the genesis of intelligent design

Andrew Maynard — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:15:55 +0000

Charles Darwin has a lot to answer for. He saw the world with new eyes, fundamentally changed our understanding of nature, and upset a lot of people in the process. 200 years after his birth, Darwin’s work underpins modern biology. His findings still challenge, stimulate and—amazingly—offend people the world over. And his discoveries continue to teach us a lesson we are only now beginning to appreciate fully—that life is plastic; that it can change and adapt, and can therefore be manipulated and controlled.

It’s this last point I want to write about on the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth. Because as well as possibly marking another critical step in humanity’s history, it also contains a delicious irony—but more on that in a moment…

Manipulating living organisms isn’t new—people have been doing it through selective breeding for thousands of years. But until Darwin’s time, it wasn’t clear what the underlying principles were, and how far selective breeding could be pushed.

Darwin’s genius was that he recognized that plants and animals have an ability to adapt to their environment and to pass these adaptations on to subsequent generations, and that over time these adaptations through natural selection can lead to profound changes.

Yet while Darwin recognized that living things are constantly changing and adapting, he wasn’t able to elucidate the mechanisms underlying this adaptability. It was only when Crick/Watson/Franklin discovered the structure of DNA that things began to get really interesting. The combined knowledge that living things can change, and that the key to that change is a sequence of molecules embedded in all living cells, was powerfully transformative.

As science and technology progressed through the 20th century, this understanding led to genetic engineering—extracting sequences of DNA from one organism and transplanting them into another, to create plants and animals with new features and abilities. But this was—and still is—crude stuff. Granted, modern genetic modification is pretty sophisticated and has produced some important products (along with plenty of vocal opposition). But in absolute terms, it hasn’t progressed much beyond the equivalent of crafting fine jewelry while wearing boxing gloves.

All this is changing though. And it’s changing because of two developments that are transforming how scientists manipulate the genetic code that determines the form and function of all living things.

The first development is DNA sequencing. The ability to read the sequence of base-pairs that make up DNA has been around for a while, but it’s getting faster and more accurate by the day. The first “working draft” of the human genome took 13 years to compile, and was completed in 2001. Six years later, the first sequencing of an individual’s genome for under $1 million was completed—and it took a mere 2 months. And currently, there are companies speculating that by the year 2013, they will be able to read a person’s complete DNA sequence in the time it takes to boil an egg—three minutes!

This in itself is impressive. But it’s not the most important aspect of DNA sequencing. What is most significant is the transformation of biological information—information stored and used in the physical/biological world—to digital information. Because as soon as the full genetic information of an organism is in the digital world, it can be manipulated, re-written, and even debugged, with an ease and speed that would be impossible in the physical world. What is more, you can have 10, 100, 1000+ people working on the same “code” in parallel, working out how to change it to achieve specific ends.

But this development would be a mere intellectual diversion if it wasn’t for something else: the ability to construct DNA sequences, and splice them back into living organisms. The cost and ease with which DNA sequences can be synthesized is crashing. Have a sequence of base pairs on your computer you want as actual strands of DNA? Simply email it off to one of many companies, pay a few hundred dollars, and receive the physical molecules in the mail a few days later—what could be simpler?

This synthesis step completes the loop—it enables scientists to upload genetic information into the digital world, change it, then download it back into a physical organism.

Just as Darwin’s work transformed how we perceive biology, this new digital biology will transform what we do with it.

Think about it. We are on the brink of being able to transfer the instruction set of something that’s living into computer code, change that instruction set—even write a completely new instruction set—then transfer it back into something that’s alive. In means that the metaphorical boxing gloves are off as far as genetic engineering goes. It means that what we can achieve will be limited only by our imagination and understanding of how biology works. It means that, at some point soon, we will be able to design and create from scratch new life.

To get a sense of the scale of this development, consider for a moment how digital special effects have transformed movies—where the physically improbable can be made to look real. Now imagine being able to do this in real life—not just in a two-dimensional facsimile on a movie screen. There may be a dash of hyperbole in the analogy—but not a whole lot I suspect.

And this is where we get to that rather delicious irony I mentioned earlier.

One of the big objections to a Darwinian world-view currently in vogue is the idea of irreducible complexity. The argument goes something like this: Certain bits of biology are so complex, that they couldn’t possibly have evolved. Therefore they must have been intentionally designed by an intelligent being. Ergo, there must be a creator behind life as we know it, and evolution is simply an illusion.

Ignoring the fact that this argument sounds more like something out of a Douglas Adams novel than an inquiring mind, this line of reasoning leads to the theory of Intelligent Design—the idea that some parts of biology at least must have been designed rather than being the product of evolution.

The irony of course is that scientists are now close to being able to intelligently design biological systems and living organisms. But in this case, the designers are human, not deities or some super-intelligent race of beings.

This, naturally begs the question: If a thousand years from now (after scientists have designed the most intricate of organisms, society has subsequently collapsed and reformed, and humanity’s “institutional memory” has become a little cloudy) future scientists look closely at the organisms that surround them, how will they be able to distinguish between what has evolved naturally, and what has been intentionally designed?

A tricky question.

But here’s one plausible answer: Scientists, being scientists, are bound to insert their own hallmark into new designer bugs—a “designed by X” sequence that will allow anyone in the know to distinguish between what is natural, and what is not. We’ve already seen this with the first fully synthesized genome of a bacterium—where Craig Venter’s team inserted watermark DNA sequences. The sequence of amino acids expressed by these sequences spelled out “CRAIGVENTER” amongst other things—leaving you in no doubt whose brains were behind the bug.

OK, so there will need to be some fancy biology to prevent future watermarks being corrupted through mutations. But it’s a pretty safe bet that future intelligently designed organisms will carry some form of identity tag, care of their makers.

But if this is the case it makes you wonder whether, if the Intelligence Design advocates are right, we all have a designer tag buried deep within our DNA already—a sort of “GOD WAS HERE” watermark. Perhaps this is what the ID folks should be concentrating on, rather than the intellectually barren idea of irreducible complexity.

Perhaps they already are!

Back to reality though. Shifting biology between the physical world and the digital domain will likely lead to changes as profound and transformative as those instigated by Darwin 150 years ago. If the past is anything to go by, we could be in for an exciting ride. Molecular-level control over genetic information raises as many concerns and questions as it does opportunities. If we learn (as a society) how to use our new-found knowledge and abilities wisely, this is clearly a science and technology that could make many peoples’ lives significantly better. On the other hand, it will challenge some people’s notions of what life is, and the boundaries within which humans should operate.

Either way, this “synthetic biology” marks a turning point between natural selection-driven biology, and engineered biology—it is, quite legitimately, the genesis of intelligent design!

What better way to mark the bicentenary of the man who thought the unthinkable, and changed the world.

______________________________________

Postscript

While this is a somewhat tongue in cheek article about evolution, biotechnology and synthetic biology, the central idea – that of uploading genetic information into the digital domain, then back down into living organisms – is a profoundly important one. And here I must acknowledge that the significance of this loop first struck me while watching a video of Drew Endy speak at MIND 08. The idea wasn’t central to Drew’s lecture, but it certainly caught my attention enough to think it through a little further.

I should also add that there are a multitude of definitions of synthetic biology. What I have presented here is what I find helpful in differentiating what is new and transformative in this fast-moving field. But it isn’t the only way of looking at what is happening. Others will talk about applying the principles of engineering to biology, or even about creating completely artificial forms of life – all are equally valid perspecives on synthetic biology.

Welcome to the new-look 2020 Science

Andrew Maynard — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:57:19 +0000

If you are a regular visitor to 2020 Science, you may have noticed some changes creeping into the site in recent days. The content’s still the same—a clear perspective on developing science and technology responsibly, with an emphasis on nanotechnology and synthetic biology (and anything else that piques my interest). But hopefully the new layout and format make reading it a more pleasurable and productive experience.

If you don’t like the changes, blame Ruth Seeley at No Spin PR—she’s the one who is sucking me into putting the blog on a more professional footing!

Actually, that’s not at all fair—Ruth is helping develop a social networking strategy for 2020 Science (and doing a great job of it), and the changes have been prompted in part by the need to move the site to a new web host as we begin implementing the strategy. And so far, the changes enabled by the move are rather exciting. Not only does the website now look substantially better, but I can actually start playing around with WordPress plug-ins—geek heaven!

I’ll be refining the site further over the coming weeks, but in the meantime here’s a quick rundown on the more significant changes you should check out:

Quick access to nanotechnology and synthetic biology posts. Simply clicking on the relevant tab in the page header will take you to all blog posts on that subject.

Subscribe button. Actually, you’ve always been able to subscribe to 2020 Science, but this is such a neat feature I thought a reminder was due. And the button now takes you to Feedburner, to make life even easier.

Twitter feed. This is where recent 2020 Science “Tweets” are posted (do other Twitter users cringe as much as I do at the terminology here?) – check this column out for breaking news and comment on emerging science and technology, and beyond–it’s usually updated several times a day.

Top Notes. Stuff that I think is worth highlighting—expect the content to change frequently.

Lots of lovely links. Now broken down into what are hopefully helpful categories, this is a growing list of links to other blogs and websites that I enjoy reading and find useful – located towards the bottom of the right hand sidebar.

“Share this” button. If you like a blog post, please share it with your friends—it’s now as easy as pie with the neat ShareThis link on each entry.

Technorati button. If you like 2020 Science, it’s now easy to add it to your Technorati favorites – simply click the button in the sidebar.

Resources tab. In the header—this is where you can find links to lectures I’ve given, stuff I’ve published, and media articles where I’ve been quoted. Probably not interesting for most people, but the stuff’s there, just in case.

That’s pretty much it for the moment. Next blog: back to the business of writing about “important” stuff.

Enjoy.

(And please don’t forget to comment!)

Biohacking—synthetic biology for the technologically marginalized

Andrew Maynard — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 02:41:09 +0000

Last June I wrote a short piece on biohacking, prompted by a UK report on the social and ethical challenges of synthetic biology. At the time, I though the aspirations of the nascent biopunk community naively optimistic, but potentially worrying. Six months on, biohacking is hitting the mainstream press—and gaining momentum.

Maybe it was just a slow news day. Maybe the subject had substance. Either way, a story posted yesterday by the Associated Press on home-style genetic engineering has attracted quite a bit of attention over the new services.

The story revolves around Meredith L. Patterson—a 31-year-old computer programmer who is trying to develop genetically altered yogurt bacteria that glow green to signal the presence of melamine—that most recent of food-contaminants. According to the article, Patterson

“learned about genetic engineering by reading scientific papers and getting tips from online forums. She ordered jellyfish DNA for a green fluorescent protein from a biological supply company for less than $100. And she built her own lab equipment, including a gel electrophoresis chamber, or DNA analyzer, which she constructed for less than $25, versus more than $200 for a low-end off-the-shelf model.”

And if you think that sounds far out, try the group DIYBio for size. Co-founded by Mackenzie Cowell, a 24-year-old who majored in biology in college, the Cambridge Massachusetts group is setting up a community lab where people can use chemicals and lab equipment according to AP—including a used low temperature freezer, scored for free off Craigslist!

The “role models” here seem to be the info-tech underdogs made-good. “Defenders say the future Bill Gates of biotech could be developing a cure for cancer in the garage” notes the AP story, while a piece appearing in the Times Online notes

“Indeed, Apple and Google were created in hobbyists’ garages, and have since gone on to change millions of lives for the better while contributing billions of dollars to the global economy.”

Unfortunately, biotech is not info-tech, although the similarities are seductive—stored information that holds detailed instructions; an ability to re-write this information to control how something behaves; access to increasingly inexpensive tools for manipulating this information; a grass-roots community working outside established institutions; and the possibility of outsiders getting one over the technological elite.

But biotech—and synthetic biology in particular—differs from information technology in a number of critical areas. This is complex stuff—ask any biologist. And it is going to be really tough for a self-trained “biopunk” to assimilate the knowledge and expertise to make a productive contribution to biotechnology. Then, biology is messy. The organic is, quite literally, “organic”—meaning that it resists being ordered and marshaled in the same way as electronic circuits are. And at the end of the day, there is no easy off-switch to living things.

As I wrote back in June,

“when a hacker causes the digital reality in their computer to malfunction through tinkering, they can simply reboot and start again.”

The trouble is, I don’t think that these differences are going to stop the biohacker community growing. And while I have my doubts that the community will produce the Bill Gates of biotech, I do worry that they could cause a lot of harm in trying—you know after all what they say about a little knowledge…

To date, one of the greatest safety concerns over synthetic biology has been dual use—the fear that someone will use it to create a suber-bug (or similar) for malevolent purposes. But my greatest fear is that enthusiastic—and largely uncontrolled—amateurs will create problems out of well-intentioned ignorance. Or more worrying still, they will intentionally develop a disruptive “creation,” just because they can. After all, look at the origins of many computer viruses.

There are some ways in which harmful garage activities could be curbed—suppliers of DNA sequences monitoring who is purchasing what for example. But this is an area that has so far been woefully under-investigated.

A new suite of projects recently announced by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation will hopefully make in-roads into the safe development of synthetic biology. But time is short, the stakes are high, and it’s going to take more than a few foundation grants to get this right.

In the meantime, the Meredith L. Patterson’s of this world are issuing a rallying call to the technologically marginalized—saying you too can play with the big boys and girls at the game of life.

And it won’t be long before they really can…

______________________________

Update 12/27/08: for more information on synthetic biology, check out the Synthetic Biology Project at the Wilson Center

A "manifesto" for socially-relevant science and technology

Andrew Maynard — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 20:36:15 +0000

In 2003, Harvard University’s Sheila Jasanoff wrote about what she termed “Technologies of Humility.” Recognizing the growing disconnect between technological progress and its effective governance, Jasanoff explored new approaches to decision-making that “seek to integrate the ‘can-do’ orientation of science and engineering with the ‘should-do’ questions of ethical and political analysis.” Five years on, her (still radical) ideas resonate deeply with the science and technology ambitions of the incoming Obama administration.

Sitting down this morning, I had intended to write about three papers recently published on-line in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. The papers (by Kahan et al., Pidgeon et al. and Sheufele et al.)—which were widely reported on a few weeks back—consider factors influencing “public” responses to nanotechnology, and challenge long-held beliefs that knowledge leads to acceptance.

However, I became distracted! Searching for an original frame for these studies, I returned to Jasanoff’s 2003 paper “Technologies of Humility: Citizen participation in governing Science,” published in the journal Minerva (Minerva 41:223-244). Reading it, I was struck afresh by how germane Jasanoff’s ideas are, how completely they seemed to have been ignored in US policy making, and how important they are to the science and technology agenda of the incoming Obama administration.

Rather than read a re-hash from me of what is an eloquently written and very accessible paper, I would strongly recommend you pour yourself a glass of good wine (a cup of coffee or fine tea will do just as well), carve out some quality time, and read the original—which is downloadable from here [PDF, 120 KB]. It is after all the holiday season, and what better than a good read to fill the long hours before the grind of work begins once again!

But just in case you are in a hurry and care to put up with my crude and flawed overview, here you are:

Jasanoff starts out:

“Long before the terrorist atrocities of 11 September 2001 in New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania, the anthrax attacks through the US mail, and the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, signs were mounting that America’s ability to create and operate vast technological systems had outrun her capacity for prediction and control.”

Looking back over 20 years of “ ‘normal accidents’, which were strung like dark beads through the latter years of the twentieth century and beyond” Jasanoff notes that

“Scientiﬁc and technical advances bring unquestioned beneﬁts, but they also generate new uncertainties and failures, with the result that doubt continually undermines knowledge, and unforeseen consequences confound faith in progress.”

This opens up a discussion on risk, which Jasanoff argues, is not “a matter of simple probabilities, to be rationally calculated by experts and avoided in accordance with the cold arithmetic of cost-benefit analysis,” but rather is part of the human condition, and “woven into the very fabric of progress.”

“Critically important questions of risk management cannot be addressed by technical experts with conventional tools of prediction. Such questions determine not only whether we will get sick or die, and under what conditions, but also who will be affected and how we should live with uncertainty and ignorance. Is it sufﬁcient, for instance, to assess technology’s consequences, or must we also seek to evaluate its aims? How should we act when the values of scientiﬁc inquiry appear to conﬂict with other fundamental social values? Has our ability to innovate in some areas run unacceptably ahead of our powers of control? Will some of our most revolutionary technologies increase inequality, promote violence, threaten cultures, or harm the environment? And are our institutions, whether national or supranational, up to the task of governing our dizzying technological capabilities?”

According to Jasanoff, effective technology management needs to go far beyond the “speaking truth to power” paradigm that still seems to link knowledge to power. And in particular, greater accountability in the production and use of scientific knowledge is essential.

“Accountability in one or another form is increasingly seen as an independent criterion for evaluating scientiﬁc research and its technological applications, supplementing more traditional concerns with safety, efﬁcacy, and economic efﬁciency.”

But how can new approaches to establishing and ensuring accountability be developed within the constrains of existing ways of doing business? Jasanoff argued back in 2003 that the time was ripe for seriously re-evaluating existing models and approaches. And at the close of 2008, her recommendations are all the more pertinent for a lack of enlightened progress in the intervening years.

From this starting point, Jasanoff develops the idea of “technologies of humility”—“social technologies” developed around a framework that poses “the questions we should ask of almost every human enterprise that intends to alter society: what is the purpose; who will be hurt; who beneﬁts; and how can we know?” These are presented as a counter-balance to what she refers to as the modern reliance on “technologies of hubris”—a command and control approach to science and technology that seeks to clear the way for science-driven innovation. Instead, Jasanoff reasons that

“there is a need for ‘technologies of humility’ to complement the predictive approaches: to make apparent the possibility of unforeseen consequences; to make explicit the normative that lurks within the technical; and to acknowledge from the start the need for plural viewpoints and collective learning.”

In developing her ideas, Jasanoff highlights problems that continue to plague the sustainable development of emerging technologies—especially when it comes to addressing and managing potential risks. In discussing the limitations of conventional peer review in the context of oversight and risk management, she notes that a spate of highly-publicized cases of alleged fraud in science in the 1980’s showed that

“regulatory science, produced to support governmental efforts to guard against risk, was fundamentally different from research driven by scientists’ collective curiosity.”

This is a lesson that the US government still seems to be struggling with—at least when it comes to nanotechnology—if the recent report from the National Academies of Science is anything to go by.

The issue of peer-review opens up the question of how science should be evaluated within different contexts. Jasanoff remarks that, as new approaches to knowledge production are developed, so new ways of assessing quality are needed.

“Besides old questions about the intellectual merits of their work, scientists are being asked to answer questions about marketability, and the capacity of science to promote harmony and welfare.”

This is challenging the old way of doing things, and raising the need for new ways of ensuring socially responsive and responsible science and technology. As Jasanoff points out, “science that draws strength from it’s socially-detached position is too frail to meet the pressures put upon it by modern society.”

The overarching message here—and Jasanoff delves deeper into the problems and potential solutions than these notes reflect—is that new approaches are needed to partnering with society in the science and technology enterprise. And she reflects that

“while national governments are scrambling to create new participatory forms, there are signs that such changes may reach neither far enough nor deeply enough to satisfy the citizens of a globalizing world.”

Sobering words that are, if anything, more relevant now than they were five years ago.

But what is the solution? Jasanoff develops four focal points for socially relevant and responsible science and technology—framing, vulnerability, distribution and learning. These are packed terms, and you really need to read the paper to understand better what she is proposing. But here are some pointers:

Framing: The quality of solutions to social problems depends on the way they are framed. Get the framing wrong, and the solutions suffer. Jasanoff argues that frame analysis—how you define and approach a problem—is a critically important yet neglected tool for policy-making, which would benefit from greater public input.

Vulnerability: Population-based approaches to risk assessment and management typically overlook the condition and perspectives of individuals, and in doing so underplay the importance of various socio-economic factors. Jasanoff notes that through participation in the analysis of their own vulnerability, ordinary citizens may regain their status as active subjects, rather than remain objects in yet another expert discourse.

Distribution: Issues here stem from “end-of pipe” approaches to legitimizing science and technology advances, and disconnects between groups that benefit from advances, and those that pay for them. Jasanoff suggests that sustained interactions between decision-makers, experts and citizens, starting at the upstream end of research and development, could yield significant dividends in exposing the distributive implications of innovation.

Learning: There’s a tendency within the science and technology community to think that increased learning reduces divergence in opinions—as if there is one true “answer,” and more learning is the means to discovering it (see Kahan el al. in particular on this). But as Jasanoff points out, experience is subject to many interpretations—as much in policy-making as in literary or historical analysis. In other words, while the science might be clear, the decisions it leads to rarely are. Jasanoff recommends that new avenues be designed through which societies can collectively reflect on the ambiguity of their experiences, and assess the strengths and weaknesses of alternative explanations.

Looking through Jasanoff’s recommendations, her emphasis on citizen participation in governing science and technology comes to the fore. It is clear—from her perspective—that old-style command and control models of science and technology innovation no longer work, and that change is needed.

Sadly, in the US at least, we seem no closer to making progress than we were five years ago. The recent National Academies report on the US government’s nanotechnology risk-research strategy indicated that, despite huge efforts to get things right within the federal government, outmoded paradigms and bureaucratic constraints undermined the whole process. And movement on citizen participation in governing nanotechnology is near non-existent—despite clear calls for progress to be made in the 2003 Twenty First Century nanotechnology R&D Act.

And nanotechnology provides just one example—emerging technologies like synthetic biology, and the convergence between nanotech, biotech and information tech, are poised to stress the system to a far greater extent than nanotechnology alone has so far done. How then will our “technologies of hubris” cope?

The solution is to rethink the interface—or contract if you like—between science and society. When better to start this process of rethinking than with a fresh new science and technology-focused administration. And where better to start with Jasanoff’s technologies of humility.

And those three papers that started this rather side-tracked discussion? I must beg Dan, Dietram and Nick’s forgiveness because, excellent and relevant as their papers are, I have run out of space!

Instead, I would direct you to Richard Jones’ excellent Nature editorial on the three papers, together with his blog at Soft Machines. Or if you prefer a raunchier style of commentary, check out Tim Harpur’s thoughts at TNTlog.

And as you read both the papers and the commentaries, think about what might need to change for these insights to lead to more socially integrated science and technology development.

____________

Endnotes

The three Nature Nanotechnology papers I woefully neglected to comment on are:

Pidgeon, N., Harthorn, B. H., Bryant, K. and Rogers-Hayden, T. (2008). Deliberating the risks of nanotechnologies for energy and health applications in the United States and United Kingdom. Nature Nanotechnology DOI: 10.1038/NNANO.2008.362.

Scheufele, D. A., Corley, E. A., Shih, T.-J., Dalrymple, K. E. and Shirley S. Ho, S. S. (2008). Religious beliefs and public attitudes toward nanotechnology in Europe and the United States. Nature Nanotechnology DOI: 10.1038/NNANO.2008.361.

Kahan, D. M., Braman, D., Slovic, P., Gastil, J. and Cohen, G. (2008). Cultural cognition of the risks and beneﬁts of nanotechnology. Nature Nanotechnology DOI: 10.1038/NNANO.2008.341.

Sheila Jasanoff’s 2003 paper is:

Jasanoff, S. (2003). Technologies of humility: Citizen participation in governing science. Minerva 41:223-244. DOI: 10.1023/A:1025557512320

Saints or synners?

Andrew Maynard — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:42:12 +0000

Policy, public perceptions, and the opportunities and challenges of synthetic biology

Synthetic biology—a supreme expression of scientific hubris, or the solution to all our problems?

Like everything in life, I suspect that the answer to the question is far from black and white. Yet what is clear is that this emerging science and technology that merges evolutionary biology with systematic engineering raises many exciting new possibilities, together with a heap of complex social, ethical and even religious questions.

Striking the right balance between these opportunities and challenges will require people working together in new and innovative ways—especially those involved in researching, developing, using and overseeing synbio. If the emerging technology is to reach its potential, some tough decisions are going to have to be made at some point on what is developed, how it is used, and how it is regulated. And the more these decisions are based on sound science and informed thinking, the better.

This is the challenge a new initiative at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars has set its sights on. The just-launched Project on Synthetic Biology aims to foster informed public and policy discourse concerning the advancement of the field, working in collaboration with researchers, governments, industries, non-government organizations and others. Supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the project will draw on experience gained in addressing science and technology policy issues by the Project on Emerging Technologies—so you can expect to see some familiar faces here ☺

Rather than write a tedious infomercial for the new project, I would suggest instead that you check out the snazzy new website at www.synbioproject.org. Having said that, there are three things worth highlighting:

1. Trends in American and European Press Coverage of Synthetic Biology. Tracking the last five years of coverage.

The launch of the new project coincides with the publication of a new report on US and European Press coverage of synthetic biology, by Eleonore Pauwels and Ioan Ifirm.

The data-rich report notes that in the short term, public awareness and understanding of synthetic biology will be influenced by press coverage, and especially how the field is framed in the media. In an area of growing press coverage on both sides of the Atlantic, the analysis shows small but relevant differences between American and European coverage. The European press has typically focused more on addressing risks and benefits together, and highlighted benefits in the areas of health and energy. In contrast, US coverage shows a bias towards covering benefits over risks and benefits combined, with an emphasis on energy and environmental applications.

The report authors recommend further assessing public perceptions to synthetic biology, promoting a transatlantic perspective on potential risks, and engaging citizens in the development of synbio. Read the full report here.

2. Synthetic Biology on the Nanofrontier?

This is a new audio podcast of a conversation between science reporter Karen Schmidt, and synthetic biology pioneer Jay Keasling. Keasling is well known for his work on a new synthetic biology-based route to producing artemisinin—an anti-malarial drug—and the use of a similar synthesis route to producing a new generation of biofuels. This is a great podcast—perfect for the morning commute—and can be downloaded here.

3. Your chance to win… small!

And finally, but definitely most importantly, the launch of the new project is being celebrated by a not-too-taxing quiz on synthetic biology. Get the answers write (or keep on trying until you do), and you get the chance to win an iPod nano—perfect for listening to the Jay Keasling podcast on! [Access the quiz here]

Synthetic biology is emerging at an interesting time for any new technology; where global challenges are crying out for new technological fixes, but hurdles to safe and successful development are constantly changing. The new project aims to steer a path through this complex landscape, and help ensure synthetic biology is developed on sound science and informed decision-making.

So that rather than ending up with a bunch of synbio synners, we get the synthetic biology saints the world deserves.

(And I must apologize for such an ugly pun! I blame overwork and not enough alcohol)

UPDATE, Dec 19:

The Alfred P Sloan Foundation has just announced a new $1.6 million synthetic biology initiative, that includes projects at the Hastings Center and the J. Craig Venter Institute, as well as the Wilson Center.

The new effort effort brings together leading scientists, ethicists and public policy specialists to explore the field’s potential benefits and risks, as well as ethical questions and regulatory issues.

From the release:

At the Hastings Center (http://www.thehastingscenter.org/), Foundation funding will allow for in-depth investigation into ethical issues that may arise in connection with developments in synthetic biology. The project aims to make serious contributions to scholarly literature, produce a base for further scholarship, and inform public policymaking.

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation funding will allow the J. Craig Venter Institute (http://www.jcvi.org/) to examine potential societal concerns associated with developments in synthetic genomics. The project will both inform the scientific community about these issues while also educating the policy and journalistic communities about the science. As a result, scientists, journalists and policymakers will be able to engage in informed discussions.

A grant to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (http://www.wilsoncenter.org/) will analyze evolving public perceptions of potential societal risks that may arise related to research in and applications of synthetic biology, clarify whether our existing regulatory systems can address relevant risks that may be associated with the science, and inform and educate policymakers.

_______________________________

Related posts:

Intrigued by synthetic biology? These previous blog posts might be of interest:

Synthetic biology: Lessons from synthetic chemistry

Synthetic Biology 4.0—changing the way science is done

Small particles are sexy; Synthetic biologists are sexier!

Synthetic biology and the public: Time for a heart to heart?

Synthetic biology, ethics and the hacker culture

Synthetic biology and nanotechnology

Emerging science and technology at 700 characters per day – how was it for you?

Andrew Maynard — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 23:50:10 +0000

The pains and pleasures of tweeting science and technology innovation, 140 characters at a time.

Five days, 539 words and 3,447 characters later, the Twitter experiment is over. Did I succeed in communicating on emerging science and technology in 700 characters a day? I’m not sure. The whole exercise was harder than I expected. Trying to come up with something interesting and relevant five times a day was a challenge. Thursday was a particularly tough day—and the entries show it!

But at the end of the exercise, I must admit it was fun. And even though tweeting will never supplant full-on blogging for communicating stuff in depth, it clearly has a place.

I’m not sure I would do a five-day stint like this again, but the medium is clearly open to innovative use. And with some thought, could be used to convey more complex information than trivial thoughts and web links. Personally, I think my writing-style took a dive with the constraints imposed by the character-limit and serial-posts. But I was surprised at how much could be crammed into 140 characters, with some thought. And while the experiment had many flaws, I think there is scope to use Twitter and similar formats in ways that lead to engagement on issues with some depth.

As a result of the “experiment,” I will be playing around more with my “tweets” over the coming weeks. You may have noticed the new “microblog” on the sidebar to 2020science, that will allow my progress to be monitored closely!

At the end of the day though, the real test is whether you, the readers, are convinced that science and technology can be conveyed in bite-sized chunks.

If you missed all the excitement, you can re-live it at the end of this email—all 25 tweets neatly laid out and ready to be mercilessly dissected! Did I embarrass myself? Did I miss the point of tweeting entirely, Was this an exercise destined to failure. Or was there a hint that Twitter—and other microblogs—can be used in innovative ways to convey information? Comments please!

In the meantime, some reflections of my own:

What I liked:

The discipline and challenge of conveying useful information in a few brief characters.
Watching my thoughts and ideas develop on the fly.
The immediacy of the medium.
The possibility of plugging into and engaging with people in a wide social network.

What I didn’t like:

Not being able to add links to posts (this was a self-imposed restriction, that I broke once, but links just suck up too many of the precious 140 characters—even small ones).
Not being able to scrub the whole chain of tweets and start again.
Running out of characters when I couldn’t quite fit an idea into the space.
Having to continue feeding the beast when all hell was breaking loose elsewhere… (another self-imposed rule).
Having to decide between maintaining a flow of ideas over several tweets, and replying to other tweeters—which would have disrupted the flow.

The tweets in full:

Monday:

Why invest in science and technology? “Innovation” you are supposed to reply. But is scitech innovation all it’s cracked up to be?

Scitech innovation is clearly crucial to tackling issues that conventional tech falls short on – climate, energy, healthcare, clean water

And I’m pretty sure scitech innovation is a critical economic driver – new knowledge and know-how can add tremendous value to raw materials

OK so scitech innovation is important – just thought I would get that out of the way up-front. Next question – how do you get it right?

Answer: Keep the scitech pipeline flowing, enable tech transfer, and ensure “safe” use – sounds like something for the new stimulus package!

Tuesday:

And the important scitec? Making stuff at the nanoscale (bio and non-bio), info gen/flow/use, and mashing it all up together (convergence)

Nanotech: making stuff that does stuff at the nanoscale; is already extending the reach of conventional tech. And you aint seen nothing yet

Small changes at the nanoscale can have profound impacts – think computers, data storage, super-strong lightweight materials, targeted drugs

Question is, how do we ensure we get the biggest bang for the buck from nanotechnology – without creating more problems than we solve?

Three steps which I suspect are key to realizing nanotech’s potential: relevant research, effective tech transfer, and responsive oversight.

Wednesday:

Hot off the press: according to the National Academies the feds are still struggling with getting safe nano right: http://tinyurl.com/5mnxk9

But that’s an aside, because today I wanted to focus on playing with biology at the nanoscale, and specifically on synthetic biology.

Drew Endy: “Biology is nanotechnology that works.” If we can engineer bio like we do non-bio, is this a shortcut to some advanced nanotech?

Imagine being able to program living things through their DNA to do specific things – generate energy, synthesize fuels, construct materials

That’s where we are heading with synbio – a powerful mix of engineering and biology. Transformative stuff, but ethically complex I suspect!

Thursday:

Strip away the soft squidgy stuff and synbio is all about manipulating, transmitting and utilizing information; information tech writ small

Information provides meaning to things. Which means that innovation in info generation, interpretation, use etc commands a high premium.

Information storage – could you live without your computer, TiVo, iPod, iPhone, digital camera, on-line repository of digital bric-a-brac?

Information use – humans and machines are becoming nodes in a rapidly evolving and growing global “digital brain” – and innovation is rife!

Information technology is an incredible powerhouse of innovation that is evolving at breakneck speed; adding value, while challenging norms.

Friday:

Separately, info nano and biotech have tremendous potential. But when they interact and overlap, innovation explodes. This is convergence.

Innovation most readily flourishes at the interface between disciplines/technologies/ideas – you know that. This is where the sparks fly.

But innovation at scitech interfaces isn’t easy. The sparks of new ideas are delicate, and easily doused by old ways of thinking and working

On the other hand, when convergent innovation gets going, it can burn like wildfire (internet, ICE?). Then the name of the game is control.

So back to the original Q’s: why invest in scitech, and what is needed for success? In 32 characters: Necessity, imagination & wisdom. OK?

Synthetic biology: Lessons from synthetic chemistry

Andrew Maynard — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:20:50 +0000

Looking back to chart a course to the future

This coming lunchtime*, former New York Times columnist Denise Caruso will discuss the promise and pit-falls of synthetic biology with Center for American Progress senior fellow and former Washington Post science reporter Rick Weiss. Given the track record of both participants, I’m anticipating a stimulating and spirited discussion, which will draw on Caruso’s just-published article on an overview and recommendations for anticipating and addressing emerging risks from synthetic biology.

But rather than focus on Denise’s piece [which as you would expect from a talented writer, speaks quite eloquently enough for itself], I thought I would provide a slice of back-story to synthetic biology. And to do this, I want to use a rather good paper published last year by Brian Yeh and Wendell Lim (of the University of California San Francisco)…

The paper—which is an engaging and easy read for anyone with a rudimentary grasp of chemistry and biology—was published in Nature Chemical Biology back in September 2007. Freely available here, it looks at the parallels between synthetic biology and synthetic chemistry, and considers how these might inform the development of synbio.

The story goes something like this:

The mid-1900’s saw a radical shakeup in chemistry: Instead of simply analyzing existing chemicals, scientists learnt the tricks of making them. And as their skills grew, they started to add new molecules to the list of those they could synthesize—including some molecules that did not occur naturally. This shift from observing chemicals to making them led to a profound change in chemistry—one we are still seeing the ramifications of today. It’s hard to find an area of life that isn’t affected in some way by the products of synthetic chemistry.

Synthetic chemistry came about as new ideas, experimental techniques and measurement abilities coalesced together. It’s early champions didn’t understand everything about how and why atoms and molecules behave, but they were sharp enough to see the utility of what they were achieving, and how things could be improved by systematic experimentation. And unconstrained by more recent distinctions between pure and applied science, their results-driven research ended up leading to a more fundamental understanding of chemical structure and reactivity.

Now, holding this image of the transition between analytical and synthetic chemistry in your mind, go back to biology. Until recently, biology was largely an observational science. But the development of new tools, techniques and ideas in recent years has opened the door to changing and manipulating what we could previously only observe—particularly at the molecular level. Advances in biotechnology are now allowing scientists to not only map out functional sequences of DNA, but to design and build their own sequences. In effect, there is a move towards being able to make—to synthesize—the basic components of living organisms. And this in turn is opening up biology to systematic manipulation and control.

In effect, biology at the beginning of the twenty first century is where chemistry was one hundred and fifty years ago. And by inference, the shift from analytical to synthetic biology is poised to have a profound impact on our understanding of biology, and how it can be used.

This analogy between synthetic chemistry and synthetic biology is both comforting and concerning.

Comforting, because it suggests that the development of synthetic biology can be guided by historic precedent—the future is not as foreign as we at first thought. And the analogy also helps place synbio in a continuum of technological development. Just as synthetic chemistry built on analytical chemistry, synthetic biology builds on our understanding of what makes life work.

In fact what sets synthetic biology apart from biotechnology up to this point is not so much a shift in basic understanding, as the application of new ideas about how that understanding can be used (augmented by rapidly developing techniques for analyzing and manipulating biological molecules). This is remarkably close to what sparked the rise of synthetic chemistry.

[As an aside, I was intrigued to read that the parallels between synbio and “synchem” are so close that there were some that feared the advances of synthetic chemistry could lead to the creation of living beings—sound familiar?]

But the analogy is also concerning. While synthetic chemistry has had a profound impact on society, it has not always been a positive impact. The “suck it and see” approach to chemistry has led to some notable disasters, and chemicals regulations are still trying to play catch-up. And while I would defy anyone to deny that the products of synthetic chemistry make their lives better, there is the rather philosophical question of whether we are reliant on these products because we needed them, or because their use fosters dependence?

In addressing these questions, synthetic chemistry provides a useful basis to ask what has worked in the past, what has gone wrong, and what needs to be done better. But in doing so, we must be careful not to loose sight of two things:

First, the ideas and abilities currently being thrown into the synthetic biology melting pot are primed to lead to a radical—and largely unpredictable—shift in what is possible. And while we might be able to gain some comfort in the thought that this step-change in technological ability isn’t anything new, I’m pretty sure the consequences will be. No two ways about it—synthetic biology will bring with it with challenges as unique as the opportunities it presents.

And second, synthetic biology gets into the very heart of what makes the biological world go round. While the synthetic chemistry revolution allowed us to tinker around with the “hardware,” we are now getting into the “software” of life itself. This raises a number of ethical questions as well as purely practical questions—just because we can alter the code that determines biological identity, should we? And if something goes wrong, can we “reboot?”

However synthetic biology pans out, we can be sure of an exciting few years ahead of us. Given major challenges facing global communities like hunger, disease and energy shortages, it’s hard to justify not embracing this technology—it promises to open the way to solutions unachievable through other routes.

But the challenges to using it wisely will be immense. Yeh and Lim suggest that synthetic biology will require sociological reorganization of how biologists work on problems—I suspect the reorganization will need to extend far beyond the bounds of biology if sustainable synbio solutions are to emerge.

The good news is that the successes and failures of synthetic chemistry at least give us a taster of what we are in for, and what we need to think about if synthetic biology is to reach its potential.

_______________________________________________________________________
*For those of you unfortunate enough to be reading this after 12:30 PM (Eastern Time) on Friday November 14, the conversation between Weiss and Caruso can re-lived here.

Synthetic Biology 4.0—changing the way science is done

Andrew Maynard — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 02:02:44 +0000

Sitting here absorbing the atmosphere at the Synthetic Biology 4.0 meeting in Hong Kong, I have the strangest feeling of being transported into a Kim Stanley Robinson novel. It’s not the cutting edge science being presented that is responsible, exciting and innovative as this is. Neither is it the spectacular and futuristic setting, high above Clear Water Bay at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Rather, it’s the sense of a community that has come together to redefine how science and technology are developed and used within society; coupled with the possibility that they might just succeed!

The reference to Kim Stanley Robinson comes from his Mars trilogy, where he chronicles in some depth a hypothetical convergence between science, policy, business and social concerns, in redefining how things are done in a complex and challenging future. Although this is pure science fiction, Stanley Robinson captures what might happen if a community of visionaries, entrepreneurs and social activists come together to change the world; united by a desire to work together and a belief that anything is possible.

The analogy might be a little far fetched, but the buzz that pervades the Synthetic Biology 4.0 meeting is at least partly due to a sense of people coming together from very different backgrounds with a common purpose, and a healthy naivety when it comes to attempting the “impossible”.

And the mix of people and perspectives here is truly eclectic. Discussions on open-source synthetic biology and the creation of genetic building blocks interleave with workshops on social impacts and posters on community regulation. Yesterday the meeting heard from Alex Ng, a high school student on one of last year’s winning teams in iGEM—the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition. This morning, Waclaw Szybalski—credited with first coining the term “synthetic biology” in the 1970’s—addressed the meeting. And this afternoon, Pat Mooney of the ETC group—one of the most vocal groups questioning the unconstrained development of synthetic biology—will be chairing a series of talks on social implications.

And threaded through everything is this feeling of a grass-roots movement that truly believes that it can change the world from the bottom up.

This is as important as it is exciting. New partnerships between the developers and users of emerging technologies like synthetic biology are needed if these are to truly serve society. The grass-roots buzz at Synthetic Biology 4.0 promises a new community-driven approach to developing effective partnerships. But the process is fragile. Diverse stakeholders and interest groups are still willing to sit around the table and trade ideas and concepts. But what happens when the stakes are raised—when the possible becomes the probable?

The hope is that this new way of working together can be made as robust as possible as early as possible, so that when the commercial successes come and the tough social questions are raised, this new network of partnerships doesn’t dissolve into old factions.

An idea that only belongs in science fiction? I hope not!

Synthetic biology and the public: Time for a heart to heart?

Andrew Maynard — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:45:20 +0000

So, you have a cool new science that could make a major impact on global challenges like energy, disease and pollution and you want to make sure it reaches its full potential. What do you do? At some point, having a heart to heart with “the public” might be a good idea. Especially if your “cool new science” involves playing around with the very building blocks of life!

A just-released national survey on awareness of and attitudes toward nanotechnology and synthetic biology from the Wilson Center Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies should help kick-start this conversation. For the first time, this annual telephone poll has included questions on synthetic biology—the use of advanced science and engineering to make or re-design living organisms (such as bacteria) so that they can carry out specific functions. The results are intriguing, and should help inform the path toward responsible and socially acceptable uses of synthetic biology. But more on this later…

I have been eagerly awaiting the results of the survey for some time. Would people’s awareness and attitudes match those found for nanotechnology, or would the extension of nanometer-scale manipulation to the biological world raise new fears and hopes? And how would the concept of making new life from dead chemicals resonate with the religiously inclined?

Impatient for results, I tried out a quick experiment on my eleven-year-old son. Presented with a one-line definition of synthetic biology similar to the one above, I asked what his first thoughts were. The results: “Isn’t that against the Bible?” Followed immediately by “Isn’t that like Frankenstein’s monster?”

At this point I should establish that the reason for using such a young and naïve subject was to gauge how accessible the definition for synthetic biology was that we were developing. But his responses intrigued me. He is not overtly religious (although he does attend church regularly), and he is untainted by the Frankenfood debates surrounding genetically modified foods. Yet he immediately focused in on two key areas that seem to dog attitudes toward biological manipulation. Understandably therefore, I was keen to see whether the results of the current telephone poll—conducted across the United States by Peter D. Hart Research Associates Inc.—matched these concerns.

The results of the poll weren’t as clear-cut as my son’s response, but they did highlight some interesting points.

First off, synthetic biology is not on the radar for most people. 67% of the thousand people polled had never heard of the field, while a mere 2% claimed they had heard a lot about it. Yet when asked whether they thought the benefits would outweigh the risks (or vice versa), 60% of people who had never previously heard of synthetic biology voiced an opinion. That’s right—they didn’t know what it was, but they sure knew whether they liked it or not!

This has echoes of Dan Kahan’s work at the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School. Dan has shown previously that when people are initially introduced to nanotechnology, their attitudes are driven by an emotional response—their gut feeling. Such a gut-response to nanotechnology is seen in the current poll. But in this case, more people were willing to make an initial judgment on synthetic biology than nanotechnology.

I mention Dan’s work because he found that when people leaned more about nanotechnology, their opinions were heavily influenced by their value systems; moral, political, religious, or otherwise; and not just by the science. If this holds true for synthetic biology, people with strong religious beliefs might be expected to respond differently to more information on synbio than those less-inclined to a religious perspective—the “Isn’t that against the Bible?” response.

To gauge poll participants’ informed responses to synthetic biology, they were read two short paragraphs—one discussing its potential benefits and the other discussing its potential risks (see the PEN report for the paragraphs). The order in which these were read was randomly rotated. Participants were then asked again whether they thought the risks of synbio would be greater, the benefits greater, or whether the two would be about equal.

I was particularly interested in this question of how religious values affected people’s informed response. Delving into the data, respondents who never attend religious services were ambivalent on the risks and benefits of synthetic biology—there was no statistical difference between the numbers of people who thought benefits would outweigh risks, and vice versa. But people who attended religious services once or more per week were on balance more likely to feel that potential risks would dominate potential benefits.

Of course, it may be that this trend simply reflects a more risk-averse attitude amongst the religiously active. But comparing the synthetic biology data with the informed attitudes to nanotechnology counters this suggestion. In the case of nanotechnology, people who attended religious services once or more per week were ambivalent on whether the risks and benefits of the technology would dominate, while the religiously un-engaged clearly felt on balance that the benefits outweighed the risks.

A similar comparison between attitudes toward synthetic biology and nanotechnology was seen when poll subjects were separated out by gender, education and income.
Men on balance felt the benefits of nanotechnology would outweigh the risks, while women were on the fence. But when it came to synthetic biology, men were on the fence, and on balance women felt the risks would dominate.

College graduates anticipated the benefits of nanotechnology would dominate the risks on balance, while people educated to high school or less were ambivalent. For synbio, the graduates were undecided on whether risks or benefits were greater, while on balance those who only reached high school education or less thought the risks would be greater.

People earning more than $75 thousand a year thought the benefits of nanotechnology would be more significant on balance, while those earning less than $30 thousand per year weren’t sure. In the case of synthetic biology, the participants earning $75 thousand or more weren’t so sure about risks and benefits, while those earning less than $30 thousand were sure on balance that the risks would be greater.

Overall, there were plenty of people within each gender, education, income and religious observance group who bucked the trends—anticipating more benefits when the majority were expecting higher risks, and vice versa. But the overall picture is one of nanotechnology as an area where people are on balance either ambivalent about risks and benefits or anticipating the benefits to dominate, and synthetic biology as an area where people are either on the fence or anticipating the risks to dominate.

This is critical information to anyone trying to chart a course to successful and sustainable uses of synthetic biology. Clearly, there’s something about the conjunction of “synthetic” and “biology” that drives an emotive and values-driven response in people that isn’t seen for nanotechnology. But what to do about this? If synthetic biology is truly as important as its proponents believe, there’s a lot of work to do ahead in engaging with people to help develop socially acceptable applications.

Fortunately, this “new cool science” is still in its infancy, and the opportunities to engage with “the public” are still there. But it is growing up fast—The J. Craig Venter Institute is racing ahead towards creating the first artificial bacteria, and “biohackers” are learning how to re-engineer life at an increasingly rapid pace.

Some deep soul-searching between synthetic biologists and the public may not be in the making yet. But a serious heart to heart will be needed sooner rather than later, if synbio is to reach its full potential without major growing pains.

Synthetic biology, ethics and the hacker culture

Andrew Maynard — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 23:36:14 +0000

“As DNA sequencing becomes cheaper and quicker and second hand equipment becomes available on eBay the power to create synthetic sequences may be dispersed to many individuals and groups. Biohackers have also become known by the portmanteau ‘biopunk’ (biotech punk), that has its origins as a science fiction genre. The most recent, and significant addition to this movement has been the online publication of a ‘Primer for Synthetic Biology’, a manual, written in simple, non-technical language, for those wishing to engage themselves in some bio hacking.”

With my interest piqued, I went on-line to check out the “biopunk” community. A quick search brought up this recent comment from a teenager on the biopunk.org website:

“A few weeks ago I had somebody in school complaining about her eating disorder, Ceiliacs disease or something, and how she can’t eaten certain foods because of it. She has mentioned this before, and frankly I was tired of it, so I spent just *20* minutes on the internet during my lunch period and found a cure hidden in the patent database, and then told her how to use http://e-oligos.com/ and thenhttp://biohack.sf.net/ and http://openwetware.org/ to get the materials she needs from http://labx.com/to implement the solution in some gastrointestinal bacteria and cure it herself. Problem freakin’ solved.” [http://www.biopunk.org/on-the-state-of-biodiy-biopunk-culture-t36.html]

I have no idea whether synthetic biology is as accessible to the masses as this comment would imply (I suspect not). But clearly there is a growing culture of people interested in playing with genetic software and hardware in much the same way as conventional hackers play with computer software and hardware. And this is being spurred on by increasingly easy access to tools and knowledge within a growing grassroots community.

Additional parallels between digital and biological hacking abound. For instance, one of the drivers behind the development of the digital world most of us now inhabit was the open source movement, providing open access to computer code on the understanding that hackers shared any improvements made to the code with the rest of the world. Similar movements are growing up around synthetic biology, with the significant difference being that the “code” is now biological. A good example is the BioBricks Foundation that is developing an open source registry of standard biological parts that can be used to “program living organisms in the same way a computer scientist can program a computer.”

While only time will tell whether the biopunk movement will have the same impact on synbio as the hacker culture had on the digital world (and there are plenty of skeptics out there who are doubtful), the idea of “hacking biology” appeals to plenty of people. Especially where it brings within their grasp tools that enable engineering-based concepts to be applied to biological systems. Drew Endy—a leading proponent of synthetic biology—had this to say in a recent interview:

“Programming DNA is more cool, it’s more appealing, it’s more powerful than silicon. You have an actual living, reproducing machine; it’s nanotechnology that works. It’s not some Drexlarian (Eric Drexler) fantasy. And we get to program it. And it’s actually a pretty cheap technology. You don’t need a FAB Lab like you need for silicon wafers. You grow some stuff up in sugar water with a little bit of nutrients. My read on the world is that there is tremendous pressure that’s just started to be revealed around what heretofore has been extraordinarily limited access to biotechnology.” [Edge, issue 237, February 19 2008]

While the debate surrounding the social and ethical development and use of synthetic biology tends to focus on issues such as bioterrorism, uncontrolled releases, global justice and the creation of “artificial life,” it is quite possible that a successful biopunk movement will change the context within which this debate is conducted. How do you establish a framework for socially and ethically responsible development when the person you need to reach is an adolescent teenager constructing new biological code in their basement?

This is a major challenge to the development of safe and societally accepted synthetic biology. Biological hacking may never develop on the scale of computer hacking —“life” might shatter our hubris by turning out to be more complex than anyone imagined. But I do not think we can afford to be complacent here. The four recommendations made in the BBSRC report will definitely help pave the way towards socially and ethically responsible synthetic biology: recognizing the importance of maintaining public legitimacy and support; ensuring the scientific community engage with society on the impacts of their work; pursuing partnerships with civil society groups, social scientists and ethicists; and putting in place a robust governance framework before synthetic biology applications are realized. However, I suspect that these are just the first steps in a long process to ensure society as a whole takes responsibility for developing and using an increasing level of control over the basic building blocks of life wisely.

As a final thought, when a hacker causes the digital reality in their computer to malfunction through tinkering, they can simply reboot and start again. It might not be so simple when hacking life itself. This may be a flawed analogy, but it is probably something the new socioethics of synbio should address if serious mis-steps are to be avoided.

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This post first appeared on the SAFENANO blog in June 2008

Smart science for the 21st century

Andrew Maynard — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 02:24:15 +0000

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This post first appeared on the SAFENANO blog in March 2008

Synthetic biology and nanotechnology

Andrew Maynard — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 23:12:58 +0000

The popular computer game “SimLife” allows users to create and manipulate virtual people. But what are the chances of us one day being able to do the same with real organisms: building new life-forms out of basic chemicals, so “SimLife” becomes “SynLife”?

This week’s announcement by J. Craig Venter’s team (and the associated paper in Science) that they have successfully synthesized the complete genome of the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium is an important step towards achieving what is becoming known as “synthetic biology”. By constructing complete DNA sequences from scratch, the door is being opened to transforming common laboratory chemicals into new living organisms; that are engineered with specific purposes in mind. And perhaps not surprisingly, this manipulation of DNA at the nanoscale is increasingly being seen as part of the “nanotechnology revolution”.

But is synthetic biology really nanotechnology?

I was initially sceptical. While synthetic biology holds the promise of being a truly transformative technology, I suspected it was in reality just advanced biochemistry; and calling it “nanotechnology” was little more than a cynical ploy to jump on the nanotech bandwagon. Yet I must confess, having discussed the question with researchers in the field, my initial impressions are shifting.

If you consider nanotechnology to be the intentional manipulation of matter at the nanoscale and the exploitation of resulting material properties, then synthetic biology certainly begins to sound like nanotech. In contrast to “natural” biology, synthetic biology aims to construct with intent the DNA code of brand new life forms, which will quite literally have functionality that has been engineered-in at a nanometer scale. And the long-term vision of synthetic biology is to create DNA sequences that will lead to new proteins, precisely engineered to undertake specific tasks.

If this is not nanotechnology, I don’t know what is.

But I have to wonder: is the issue of whether synthetic biology is nanotechnology or not really the right question? Surely the challenge of synthetic biology is not what label we give it, but whether we have the maturity to use our new-found abilities to change the world for the better, without creating more problems than we solve.

Conceptually, there is remarkably little difference between the sequence of base-pairs in DNA and the ones and zeros making up a computer program. But while the latter allows software engineers to create incredibly complex worlds inside computers, DNA engineering opens the door to re-programming life itself. Imagine at some point in the future creating microbes to harvest energy, sequester carbon dioxide and clean up pollution, simply by typing their desired characteristics into your “SynLife” program and pressing “Enter.” It sounds fanciful, but while the consequences are profound, the technology is almost within our grasp.

I don’t think it is hyperbole to say that synthetic biology has the potential to transform our world. I would probably go so far as to say that it holds at least some of the keys to overcoming some of the biggest challenges facing society—including climate change, poverty and disease. But the challenges to using this new technology responsibly are immense: How will we handle the temptation to misuse synthetic biology; what safeguards will be put in place to prevent unforeseen “bugs” in the system; and who will determine where the ethical line in the sand is drawn, which says “thus far – and no further” – or should there even be such a line?

Thrilling and challenging as the prospects of synthetic biology are, we are not quite there yet. While Venter’s team have assembled the first complete synthetic bacterium genome, they have yet to see whether they can use it to create a living, replicating organism. The next step is to place the DNA in a cell and, in Venter’s words, see whether the cell “boots up”. But the team is hopeful that this will be achieved in a matter of months.

And when it is, the question will not be “is this nanotechnology?” but “are we ready for it?” I hope we are.

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Footnote

While the term “synthetic biology” is widely used to describe the intentional manipulation of DNA to create new proteins and organisms, it is also used in another context: the creation of non DNA-based systems that mimic biology.

To purists, this is true synthetic biology: not playing around with the existing building blocks of life, but creating a brand new construction set. This alternative construction set would consist of new molecules built from scratch, as well as systems of such molecules, that are designed to carry out functions analogous to their biological counterparts–transporting materials, harvesting energy, building structures, and even replicating themselves.

Given the current state of nanotechnology—sophisticated as it is—it is hard to imagine coming close to mimicking the complexity of even the simplest DNA-based systems in our lifetime. Yet this is an active area of research, and at some point it will raise many of the questions currently emerging with Venter’s vision of synthetic biology. But there is one important difference: while DNA-based synthetic biology tinkers with life as we know it, non-DNA synthetic biology raises the possibility of creating completely artificial life-forms. And this—if it is even plausible—opens up a whole other can of worms!

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This post first appeared on the SAFENANO blog in February 2008