The term "synthetic biology" was first used in 1980 by Barbara Hobom to describe a bacterium that had been genetically modified using recombinant DNA technology. The term was then coined again in 2000 by Eric Kool and other speakers at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco. It has been used to describe the synthesis of artificial organic molecules that play a specific role in living systems.
Synthetic biology- a new field of biology, the goal of which is the design and creation of new biological systems not found in nature. It deals with adding new properties to existing properties of an organism, for example, bacteria, or modifying existing ones. In the future, it is planned to create individual organisms capable of independent existence and reproduction with strictly specified properties.
There are three main goals of synthetic biology:
Let's consider the possibilities of synthetic biology for various disciplines. First, biologists will be able to better understand natural biological systems (it is worth remembering the words of Richard Feynman: “What I cannot create, I do not understand”).
Secondly, for chemists, synthetic biology can be presented as the next logically necessary step in synthetic chemistry (synthesis of drugs, new materials, development of more advanced analytical methods).
Synthetic biology begins its history in 1989, when a team of biologists from Zurich (led by Steven Benner) synthesized DNA containing two artificial nucleotide pairs, in addition to the four known, used by all living organisms on Earth (adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine - In DNA, in RNA, cytosine is replaced by uracil (Fig. 1).
Synthetic biology term long used to describe approaches in biology that seek to integrate various areas research in order to create a more holistic approach to understanding the concept of life.
Recently, the term has been used in a different sense, signaling a new field of study that combines science and engineering to design and construct new biological functions and systems.
Synthetic biology is a new direction genetic engineering. Developed by a small galaxy of scientists. The main goals are:
More than 100 laboratories around the world are engaged in synthetic biology. Work in this area is fragmented; Biologist Drew Andy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is working on their systematization. This will make it possible to design living systems that behave in predictable ways and use interchangeable parts from a standard set of genes. Scientists are striving to create an extensive genetic bank that allows them to create any desired organism. The bank consists of biobricks - DNA fragments whose function is strictly defined and which can be introduced into the cell genome to synthesize a previously known protein. All selected biobricks are designed to interact well with all others on two levels:
Now the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has created and systematized more than 140 biobricks. The difficulty lies in the fact that many engineered DNA fragments, when introduced into genetic code recipient cells destroy it.
Synthetic biology is capable of creating engineered bacteria that can produce complex and scarce drugs cheaply and in industrial quantities. Engineered genomes could lead to alternative energy sources or bacteria that help remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Indicator bacteria, which change color in the presence of certain substances, appeared in 2010. At first, "living sensors" were used to detect mercury contamination in water, but soon began to be used everywhere. Since 2015, the profession of a pigment hunter has become in demand, finding rare paints and their genes in exotic plants and animals. Around 2040, yoghurts with GM lactic acid bacteria E. chromi came into fashion, which help diagnose intestinal diseases by the color of the discharge. Ten years later, the Orange Liberation Front (OLF) emerged on the political scene, a terrorist organization campaigning for the preservation of the fruit's natural orange color. At the turn of the 2070s, Google's climate division filled the atmosphere with microbes that color the air when levels carbon dioxide reaches dangerous levels. “If the morning turns red, Google says: “Danger!”,” explains the popular nursery rhyme. And although Daisy Ginsberg's first predictions did not come true, this is exactly the future that synthetic biology and the ability to create new forms of life are preparing for us.
Synthetic organisms to restore the balance of natural ecosystems in an era of mass extinction. The illustration shows a self-replicating biofilm that removes air pollutants.
Modern biology, especially such a complex field as synthetic biology, does not seem like a suitable hobby for a designer and architect. But there is a clear concept behind this: according to Daisy Ginsberg, the very basic principle of design is to change natural nature for the person and for him. Therefore, at least since the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, design has been busy “translating” from the language of new technological solutions and scientific concepts into the language of things, mass-produced products that surround us everywhere. The internal combustion engine is engineering, the car is already design; piezoelectric element - physics, lighter - design.
For Ginsberg, design is what distinguishes the natural from the cultural, natural objects from those created by man; what we control from what is uncontrollable. In this sense, the GM mosquitoes developed by the British company Oxitec are also a designer product. Although they do not produce viable offspring, in nature they successfully compete for mating with their wild counterparts and reduce the number of carriers of malaria and other dangerous infections. “Golden rice” should also be called a designer product, containing a significant amount of beta-carotene and capable of solving the problem of vitamin A deficiency in some third world countries. And certainly the result of the design is a synthetic strain of Mycoplasma laboratorium with an artificially obtained genome. New organisms with new functions are the result of the application of design thinking, only in the field of synthetic biology.
Synthetic Pathologies (2009−2010) An alarming option: artificial genes end up in ordinary microbes and lead to the emergence of new strange diseases. Daisy Ginsberg: "This the new kind“a hybrid of bacteria that produce glass fiber and bacteria that respond to air pollution.”
If design is the boundary separating the natural and the cultural, then we should not assume that the areas on either side are in conflict. The cultural grows out of the natural and improves it - at least from a human point of view. The natural is a product of evolution, which always responds to the challenges of the moment and is incapable of intelligent planning or design. Evolution is unfamiliar with the concept of “better”; modern bears are not better than dinosaurs, they are simply better adapted to today’s conditions. The cultural world is developing, obeying the laws of human progress: an incandescent lamp is better than candles and torches, an LED is better than a tungsten filament.
Container for growing electrosynthetic organisms: artificial cells at different stages of growth.
However, in the field of design of living beings, until recently, a person could only participate in evolution, directing the action of artificial selection - until we had in our hands the means of manipulating the genome, powerful tools of progress, which can be compared with the emergence of precision machine production. Today, these technologies are ready to change the very “nature of nature”, to once again transform the world - and meanwhile Daisy Ginsberg is trying to understand what it will look like.
Like many biologists, the artist considers what is happening in this area to be a new revolution: “The cost of DNA sequencing and synthesis is rapidly falling. CRISPR genetic modification technologies have increased the range of possibilities available. Every year something changes,” said Daisy, giving a lecture at the PopTech forum. — Surely, GM microbes will appear to clean up oil pollution or normalize soil acidity. The use of modified mosquitoes is already a reality.”
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Sascha Pohflepp, Andrew Stellitano
GM organisms created for long-distance space missions and capable of providing astronauts with delicacies. Daisy Ginsberg: “Layer after layer of artificial fruit is produced by bacteria that can harness the energy of electricity rather than sunlight.”
Completely synthetic organisms are products of technological progress, not biological evolution, and are not at all obliged to imitate natural beings. Having only a common biochemical basis with them, they are soon ready to separate into their own branch on the tree of life. The superkingdom is on a par with bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes, developing according to its own laws, which are set by both nature and people. The operation of these laws is the main subject of interest for Daisy Ginsberg. What would a plant look like when turned into a living factory? Reasonable design will answer this: like a specialized workshop producing a part from a biopolymer. When ripe, it falls out of the opened fruit and is ready to be assembled with other fruits of synthetic plants to produce a complete useful device.
It is significant that in a series of sketches by Growth Assembly, created in 2009, such a device turns out to be a herbicide sprayer - a tool that is vital for a person living in a world of complete freedom of biotechnology. The artist does not turn a blind eye to potential hazards such a future, and in the Synthetic Kingdom project it presented a number of rather frightening consequences, the prevention of which should be taken care of in advance. In Ginsberg's view, horizontal gene transfer between synthetic and natural organisms could lead to microbes on teeth producing, for example, pigments, giving them bright colors, and "genetic leakage" from a bioelectronics factory could lead to an epidemic of phosphorescent kidney stones. .
The device, a herbicide sprayer, is grown in GM plants in the form of individual parts. Daisy Ginsberg: “Products no longer need to be shipped around the world, just the seeds need to be delivered.”
However, even this does not make biotechnologies stand out too much among human achievements: none of the former or existing technologies is devoid of negative side effects. Height modern civilization has already led to such a rapid decline in biodiversity, which scientists confidently call the Sixth global extinction in the history of life on Earth. But just as previous steps in development made it possible to solve many problems generated by previous technologies, synthetic biology is ready to “cure” the planet’s biosphere. Artificial slugs to restore the acid-base balance of the soil, artificial hedgehogs for seed dispersal, and even strange translucent organisms that infect plants and filter their juices to remove pathogens—another Daisy Ginsberg project and another touch of the biotech future. If we believe that progress really leads from good to better, then we can agree that this is exactly what it will be.
Education: Cambridge University (architecture), Stanford University (design), Royal College of Art (interaction design)
Article for the “bio/mol/text” competition: A recently published article from Harvard biologists forced many news agencies to release notes: scientists have turned E. coli into a biological analogue of a computer, in which the role of electrical signals is played by short RNA molecules. In my article I would like to give short review achievements of modern bioengineers, and then tell the general public about how “biocomputers” work and what we expect from them.
The general sponsor of the competition is the company: the largest supplier of equipment, reagents and Supplies for biological research and production.
The sponsor of the audience award and partner of the “Biomedicine Today and Tomorrow” nomination was the Invitro company.
"Book" sponsor of the competition - "Alpina Non-Fiction"
Throughout the existence of mankind, the main way to learn anything has been observation. Aristotle broke chicken eggs at different stages of incubation and sketched what he saw, later trying to explain it. Over time, a slightly more reliable method appeared - an experiment in which we completely control the observation conditions. However, lately scientists have increasingly wanted to intervene in living processes, come up with new genes useful to humanity, or simply break something and see what happens.
In modern biology, issues of intervention in living systems are dealt with by synthetic biologists and bioengineers. They are developing rational approaches to control and programming of cellular functions; are studying methods for creating artificial genetic constructs, circuits and networks. You can either look for inspiration in nature, moving genes between organisms, or come up with completely new systems that have no analogues in the living world.
To better understand the material, let’s quickly refresh your school knowledge.
Modern basic principles of molecular biology are briefly described by the so-called central dogma(Fig. 1): genetic information encodes the protein sequence and is stored in the cell in the form of DNA, and RNA carries information about amino acids to the molecular machine of protein synthesis - ribosome. You need to enter two terms: transcription- the process of RNA synthesis from a DNA template, - and broadcast- the process of protein synthesis from amino acids using an RNA matrix.
Figure 1. The central dogma of molecular biology. The diagram shows the main transfer and implementation processes genetic information in a cage.
In order to give detailed review modern achievements of synthetic biology would require a whole series of articles, so I will limit myself to a few selected ones, the most useful for humans, or simply the most exciting developments.
Site-directed mutagenesis offers a relatively simple way to determine the role of a particular gene/protein in cellular processes - the process that stops working due to the breakdown of this gene or protein obviously depends on its function. For example, we turn off a certain gene that interests us in a plant → instead of normal flowers we see only stamens and pistils → conclusion: the gene is involved in the formation of flower parts. It would seem that nature is already full of mutants, so why create new ones? But finding which gene is turned off in a natural mutant is much more difficult than manually breaking it definite us the gene.
Instead of turning off genes, you can try introducing genes from other species into the body. Classic genetic modification research focuses on agriculture and livestock, but that doesn't mean we can't do more. interesting problems the same methods.
Tropical diseases have recently attracted more and more media attention. This includes the Zika virus, Dengue fever, and malaria. And it is the latter infection that causes the most concern. In the last century, Plasmodium falciparum has become resistant to almost all classical drugs. Artemisinin, developed in the 1970s (for its development, by the way, they were awarded Nobel Prize 2015), became a new hope for doctors and really led to sharp decline mortality from malaria over the past decades. Now artemisinin is commercially produced using an artificial biochemical pathway - the enzymes that carry out the necessary reactions are collected from different bacteria into one modified strain. From the point of view of chemist-technologists, this is a wonderful solution - we do not worry about isolating intermediate products, we spend less energy on carrying out reactions, and it is easy to isolate the product - just filter out the bacteria.
To solve the problem of insect-borne diseases, there is another solution - mutagenic chain reaction , . The name sounds scary, and this is largely true. The essence of the method is to make a change in the genome spread throughout the population, with the potential to ultimately change absolutely all organisms of a given species. Figure 2 shows how the mutant type (labeled in blue) may become dominant in the population. We violate the Mendelian laws of inheritance by introducing enzymes that modify it into the genome.
Using a mutagenic chain reaction, mosquitoes can be made unable to transmit malaria, and all descendants The modified mosquito will also be unable to infect humans.
For many scientists, the mutagenic chain reaction is of great concern. A mutation, once introduced into the genome of a single individual, spreads uncontrollably in the genomes of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and all subsequent generations of the population. Because of this, “wild” organisms may disappear from the face of the earth.
A less radical, but very similar method is already being used. In Brazil, factories produce GM mosquitoes, whose offspring are sterile, and release them into the wild. This helps reduce the number of mosquitoes that carry Dengue, Zika, malaria and the like. However, since the method only works on two generations, there is no danger that something will get out of control.
Everything happens according to the laws of population genetics: modified males compete on equal terms with natural ones for reproduction, so the number of viable children in the next generation decreases, which means the number decreases. Profit!
Restriction enzymes, the same enzymes that edited the genomes of mosquitoes and fruit flies, can also help us in neuroscience.
Method Brainbow allowed neuroscientists to color every neuron in the brain (in in this case rats) in individual colors. And the point here is not only that it looks incredibly beautiful, but also that the structure of the brain has become discernible on one more level more accurately: now we can trace the connections of neurons located in the same layer of the cortex, find less obvious paths for conducting signals , bring us a little closer to compiling connectome- maps of all neuron contacts in the brain. It works like this: several fluorescent proteins are inserted into the genome different colors, and when a cell differentiates into a neuron, restriction enzymes randomly turn off some of them. Thus, each neuron has its own color and clearly stands out from the rest (Fig. 3).
But we will not dwell for long on modifications and insertions of single (non-interacting) genes, because all the complexity and intricacy of living systems is mainly due to the huge number and diversity of regulatory systems operating both at the level of transcription and translation. We now know enough about regulation to try to create networks genes that work as and when we need them.
One of important types gene networks - oscillators . These are systems that cycle between multiple states. For example, oscillatory networks regulate circadian rhythms in animals and the daily rhythms of cyanobacteria. Artificial oscillators are one of the first topics of research for bioengineers. Bacteria that cyclically change color as a result of a vicious circle of activation and shutdown of different genes (video) appeared back in 2008. Having such “temporary” control over protein production could be very important, since all of nature lives in cycles.
At the same time, newer articles talk about the possibility of achieving synchronous color changes in an entire colony.
Video. Bacteria that oscillate between fluorescent and colorless states.
Another "colored" example is bacteria, which react to light, resulting in the color they were illuminated with. Such “bacterial TV” (example in Figure 4) opens up for us new way control of the bacterial genome, which does not require any chemical effects on the culture. Indeed, different wavelengths of light irradiating cells are something like buttons on a remote control that turn on the synthesis of different proteins.
Figure 4. Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology depicted the logo of their university on a Petri dish with modified bacteria ( top left- the image that was projected onto the colony).
Scientists have not forgotten another type of macromolecule - ribonucleic acids. Let’s not dwell now on the importance of RNA for cells and its role in the processes of the emergence of life and evolution, but let’s talk more about practical side its use in synthetic biology.
On the one hand, RNA is much more diverse than DNA and proteins: many conformations (spatial structures) allow RNA to play any role, from a carrier of genetic information, a receptor/sensor, a structural framework, to even enzymatic activity.
On the other hand, RNA is maximally unstable in pure form, does not live in a cage for a long time, and working with it requires more time and effort.
The reasons for this are a little non-trivial: RNA reacts chemically with itself, and people also secrete a lot of RNases (enzymes that degrade RNA) in their sweat and breath, which acts as the first barrier of defense against viruses.
However, there are beautiful and complex developments in this area as well. Scientists from Harvard University have developed RNA biosensors: modified cells produce recognition RNAs, which are then applied to paper in the form of a cell extract. These test strips are dried and can be stored for a long time. When used, water and a sample are applied to them, the RNA receptor recognizes a certain target and triggers the synthesis of a colored protein (Fig. 5).
This produces inexpensive, durable and accurate analyzers that can use a drop of saliva or blood to identify a disease or infection in a minute outside the laboratory anywhere in the world.
From a review of the general achievements of synthetic biology, we can now move on to the promised consideration of the topic of “biocomputers.” Ahead of us lies the most the hard part material, but this does not make it any less interesting and beautiful. First, let's remember what computing devices do: they receive certain signals as input, process them (for example, compare, sum, select one of several), and then produce an output corresponding to the input data.
All living organisms are formally biocomputers: based on external conditions(light, availability of food, population density and many others) decide which proteins to synthesize, in which direction to move, when to reproduce and make reserves... But all these actions are not what we want to get. Synthetic biologists want to determine the signals, the “computation” process, and the outcome themselves. Why do we need this? Applications of “living computing” can be found in biotechnology, medicine, and even in scientific activity itself. They will help us achieve significant automation of processes, be it blood testing or monitoring a biotechnological process. And now it is in many ways possible to implement this.
A good example is the lactose operon, the work of which begins only when two conditions are met: THERE IS lactose AND NO glucose. Operation of the operon - output; glucose, lactose - inputs, conditions - processing.
An important element in calculations are logical gates (the so-called valves), performing basic operations such as AND, OR, NOT, and so on. They allow you to reduce the number of signals, make it possible to add branching (if... then... etc.) to future program. Such schemes can be implemented both at the gene level (Fig. 6) and at the translation stage using short synthesized RNA molecules. Chains of activator and repressor proteins may well be considered transistors.
A computer is unthinkable without memory, and biologists understand this. The first article on artificial biological memory was published back in 2000. Using an external signal, scientists were able to switch the cell between two stable states (for example, between the synthesis of two different proteins), which are formally a single bit of memory (Fig. 7).
Figure 7. Diagram of a gene switch. Inductors 1 And 2 - control signals, repressor genes ensure the simultaneous operation of only one half (one of two states) of the system.
Such basic elements open up enormous scope for imagination - for example, there are schemes that count the number of events that determine the boundaries of light and shadow... But there is still a long way of research, ideas and breakthroughs ahead.
It’s hard to believe, but synthetic biology has a fairly low barrier to entry (of course, only if you have the desire and knowledge). How is this possible? The path lies through competition iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine), founded in 2004. Now teams of up to six people from schoolchildren and bachelor's students can participate (there is also a separate section for everyone who is “older”).
iGEM is a real biohackathon: in spirit, the competition is very close to the biohacking movement, which has been gaining popularity over the past 10 years. In the spring, teams register and come up with a project idea. Over the summer they will have to teach bacteria (as the most standard and favorite object) something new and unusual.
This, of course, requires the presence of a laboratory, the ability to think non-trivially, good theoretical training and properly developed laboratory skills.
But with reagents and starting materials everything is much more interesting: MIT contains a “registry of standard biological spare parts” - a database of simple components such as plasmids, primers, promoters, terminators, proteins, protein domains and much more (Fig. 8), which are stored in the format of DNA molecules. There are now over 20,000 registered parts, so you can find almost anything from classic fluorescent proteins to heavy metal sensors and the famous CRISPR/Cas. After the organizing committee approves the project of the registered team, they are sent all the necessary components from the registry.
The winner is selected by a panel of 120 distinguished scientists at the annual fall conference in Boston.
As an example, I’ll tell you about one of the projects of students at Imperial College London ( Imperial College London), who won the Grand Prize in 2016. The main idea is to regulate the species ratio of bacteria in joint cultures. This may further make it possible to fully realize the potential of entire synthetic ecosystems. Students combined a bacterial system quorum feelings(by which bacteria communicate and coordinate their behavior within a species), computational circuits from RNA that compared quorum signals different types, and growth inhibitory proteins ( general scheme shown in Fig. 8). Thus, bacteria are always aware of the number of all species, and due to growth inhibitors they are able to keep its ratio constant. RNA comparators were developed from scratch, and software for recording and analyzing co-culture growth data was also introduced.
This event is quite popular in university circles, the number of participants reaches five thousand people, and even in Russia recently its own
For ten thousand years, people have grown and manipulated plants to obtain food. It all started simple - saving and selecting the fastest-growing, high-yielding seeds containing greatest number nutrients etc. This form of traditional breeding eventually led to the development of hybrid crops, which were created by crossing two genetically different lines of the same genus and usually the same species. These changes in plants were limited by genes already present in plants.
This all changed dramatically with the advent of genetic engineering in the 1970s and 1980s. allowed genes to be transferred between species, even between species different kingdoms, and when individual genes were inserted into plants using bacteria, patents for life appeared for the first time. Since then, genetically engineered organisms, often called genetically modified organisms (), have become a ubiquitous feature of industrial Agriculture in the US and accounts for approximately 88% of the corn, 94% of the soybeans, 90% of the canola, 90% of the cotton and 95% of the sugar beets grown in the country. These crops were developed and patented by chemical companies including Monsanto And Bayer, their crops are able to withstand high doses of herbicides or create their own insecticides.
Synthetic biology - extreme genetic engineering
In the second decade of the 21st century, we are likely to see even more radical changes, this time thanks to the fast-growing field known as synthetic biology. Synthetic biology is a broad term used to describe a symbiosis of new biotechnologies that go beyond the boundaries of what can be achieved through “conventional” genetic engineering. Instead of moving between different organisms one or two genes, synthetic biology allows the genetic code to be rewritten on a computer, working with hundreds or thousands of DNA sequences at a time, and even attempts to reverse engineer entire biological systems. Synthetic biology methods, scope and use of new and synthetic genetic sequences making it a very extreme form of genetic engineering.
Synthetic biology is a nascent but rapidly growing field with annual sales of more than $1.6 billion today and expected to grow to $10.8 billion by 2016. Many of the largest energy, chemical, forestry, pharmaceutical, Food and agro-industrial corporations are investing in synthetic biology, creating joint ventures, and some of these products have already reached the cosmetic, food and medical industries, others are in line. They focus most of their attention on agriculture to create the next wave of GMOs, let's call them synthetically modified organisms (SMO).
Synthetically modified organisms
Biotech and chemical giant Monsanto recently announced a joint venture with the company Sapphire Energy, a synthetic biological algae company. Monsanto is interested in algae because most types of algae can be produced daily, compared to traditional agricultural crops that only grow once or twice a year. Monsanto hopes to isolate the characteristics of algae, but at a much faster pace than can be done with plants, and then incorporate them into crops. Such technologies will allow the potential (and more extreme) number of genetically modified crops in our fields to increase.
Craig Venter, one of the leading synthetic biologists who created the first synthetic (in 2010) from the genome of a fairly simple goat pathogen, created new company Agradis, to focus on the application of synthetic biology in agriculture. Agradis' activities are aimed at creating "higher" crops and improved methods of crop growth and plant protection. The company plans to create high-yield castor beans and sweet sorghum to produce biofuels through undisclosed "genomic technologies".
There are even plans to “improve” photosynthesis in plants using synthetic biology. Researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory ( English National Renewable Energy Laboratory) in Colorado believe that the efficiency of photosynthesis can be improved by rearranging the structure of plants using modern synthetic biology and genetic manipulation. Using synthetic biology, these engineers hope to build plants from scratch, starting with a chain of amino acids, expanding the plant's capabilities, meaning plants will be able to convert more wide range light into energy, compared to existing photosynthesis.
Other applications of synthetic biology in agriculture include food flavorings, seasonings, coconut oil, feed additives, and even genetically modified animals with synthetic genes. Food flavorings may seem safe, but they actually pose a new set of risks - economic risks for farmers. This natural market is valued at $65 billion annually and currently feeds small farmers, especially in countries in the southern hemisphere. Replacing the natural production of these products with synthetic biology in US and European biotech will lead to serious socio-economic consequences and even poverty among small farmers.
The dangers of synthetic biology
While some of these developments sound promising, synthetic biology also has a dark side. If the CMO is released in environment, either intentionally (eg as crops) or unintentionally (from the laboratory), they can lead to serious and irreversible consequences in ecosystems. Synthetic organisms could become our next invasive organisms, finding an ecological niche, displacing wild populations and disrupting entire ecosystems. CMOs will lead to genetic contamination, as usually happens with GMOs, and will create synthetic genetic pollution, which cannot be cleaned or destroyed. Using genes synthesized on a computer instead of those originally existing in nature will also raise the question of human safety and the possibility that CMOs could become a new source of food allergens and toxins.
Synthetic biology will create more dangerous DNA and gene sequences that have not previously been found in nature. Our ability to synthesize new genes is far ahead of our understanding of how these genes and the biological systems in which they are embedded will work correctly and not upset the existing balance in nature. It is already difficult to assess the safety of a single genetically engineered organism, and synthetic biology will take this to an extremely high and most dangerous level. As of today, there is no not a single scientific attempt by carefully assessing the risk posed to the environment and human health by any synthetic organism, which may have tens or hundreds of entirely new genetic sequences.
Biotechnology is already largely unregulated in the United States and several countries around the world that are the main producers of GMOs, and CMOs will only expand the boundaries of this outdated system of government regulation. For example, the USDA controls GMOs through plant pest laws because most of them were produced by plant viruses. Synthetic biology opens up the possibility of CMOs that will be obtained without plant viruses, that is, these crops will become completely uncontrollable USDA or other departments.
Our biotechnology risk assessment models will quickly become obsolete. The safety of GMOs is usually determined based on the principle of “substantial equivalence” to its natural counterpart. This idea of "essential equivalence" will quickly collapse with the appearance of CMOs in the environment that will contain genes that have never existed in nature before, and their parent is a computer.
The end of industrial agriculture
Synthetic biology may offer us some promise, but it is a dangerous path to follow if we don't know where it leads. Over the past few decades, agricultural biotechnology has created many problems, many of which will be exacerbated by synthetic biology, including: genetic pollution, super-weeds, increasing dependence on increasingly toxic industrial chemicals, vast areas of unsustainable monocultures, struggles over intellectual property and lawsuits against farmers, further concentration of corporate control over food.
You don't have to go far, because "Agriculture as we know it will disappear", says Craig Venter about the prospects of synthetic biology in agriculture. We must create industrial agriculture without toxic chemical substances, refocus our energy on agricultural systems such as agroecology And organic farming . For example, a recent USDA study found that simple, sustainable changes in agriculture, such as crop rotation, produce high yields, significantly reduce the need for nitrogen fertilizers and herbicides, and also reduce the amount of toxins in groundwater without having any detrimental effect on the farmer's profit. Such systems have proven themselves to be equally, if not more productive than industrial systems agriculture, but are clearly good for our planet and climate and provide us with food that is healthier and more nutritious and does not rely on dangerous, expensive and untested technologies.
Ban on release into the environment and commercial use of synthetic biology necessary to ensure the ability to assess its risks and be able to control it in order to protect human health and the environment.
