FringeHog Friday Five

Synthetic Biology: Creating Lego’s of Life?

Most of us are familiar with Lego’s, the brightly colored plastic interchangeable bricks that serve as platforms to build models. Lego’s interchangeability is one of its most potent features. You can mix your Jedi Starfighter^TM with Hyperdrive Booster Ring bricks and your Skeleton Tower bricks to create something completely unique. The key is interchangeability.?

What if DNA could be interchanged like Lego bricks and instead of creating unique plastic models these Lego’s of life could be used to design and construct new biological entities? This isn’t a “what if”.Synthetic biology is an emerging discipline that aims to do just that, design and construct new biological entities.?

One of the heavy hitters in this emerging field is Jay Keasling. He’s using synthetic biology to create inexpensive, effective, anti-malarial drugs. His work is funded in part by the Gates Foundation. No one can describe this project better than Dr. Keasling and if you want to find out more listen to his talk during a recent PARC Forum.

Another advocate of synthetic biology is Dr Drew Endy.Endy sees synthetic biology as a way to re-create biology from an engineering perspective. Endy says, “Synthetic biology means leveraging natural structures as a way of building things on the molecular scale”. One of Endy’sgoals is to create shortcuts so that non-biologists can build things cheaper, faster and easier. This desire led him to Tom Knight, an MIT professorwho had the idea to use pieces of DNA like Lego bricks and coined the term biobricks to describe standard interchangeable genetic components.

Endy is furthering his goal of making it faster, easier and cheaper to build new biological entities by creating a public catalog, The Registry of Standard Biological Parts. Many students who compete in the International Genetically Engineered Machine, an undergraduate synthetic Biology competition begin their projects with biobricks in this registry and when the competition is over they add their new parts to the registry.

Synthetic biology brings with it both promise and peril. If it becomes fast, easy and cheap to design and construct benevolent biological entities the same will hold true for malicious biological entities. Synthetic biologists are keenly aware of the risks this technology poses. They also know that the genie is out of the bottle. Endy would like to see synthetic biology follow the path of software and go open-source. His vision is two pronged. Give free access to the DNA for biobricks and educate both hobbyist and professionals alike so they are better equipped to recognize dangerous applications of the technology. Like all disruptive technologies, synthetic biology will push the envelopeof existing social, political and legal systems to respond to the change it will catalyze.

FringeHog Friday Five (links to more info about Synthetic Biology)

Comic Adventures in Synthetic Biology

Sometimes the easiest way to communicate complex ideas is with humor. Nature published a first ever comic: “Adventures in Synthetic Biology”, by Drew Endy, Isadora Deese and the MIT Synthetic Biology Working Group, and illustrated by Chuck Wadey in their special edition on synthetic biology.?

Here’s a video of Drew Endy defining synthetic biology.?

Another Youtube video of Brown University’s IGEM Team talking IGEM.

Life 2.0 Excellent article on synthetic biology from the Economist

OpenWetWare is an effort to promote the sharing of information, know-how, and wisdom among researchers and groups who are working in biology and biological engineering.