Synthetic Biology is a novel interdisciplinary area that requires biological and computational engineering skills to concoct biological devices, parts or to also redesign organisms that are found naturally. There has been a lot of improvement in this field over the past 2 decades, things were at its pinnacle in the year 2012 as the combination of CRISPR and synthetic biology augmented and simplified gene editing in eukaryotes. I don’t know how many of you have heard of “Xenobots”, they are living robots that are very small in size (few millimeters) that can walk and swim around places. They can be administered via syringe into human body, and maybe one day they can be used to deliver targeted drug, one of the most important things about Xenobots are they can collaboratively selfheal. This little biological robot is considered one of the greatest achievements of synthetic biology.
One of the most promising vaccine to have come up this year during the pandemic is the mRNA vaccine that has shown potential breakthrough, it was through synthetic biology that this vaccine was made possible. The dogma of this field is very simple, you simply have to write/code an organism from scratch using biology and computational tools. There are rumors that in the distant future we will be able to simply 3D print the genetic code written in an app. It may sound implausible, but last year scientists from the UK had synthesized world’s first living organism (E.Coli) that contained human transcribed DNA rather than nature.
There are several basic technologies used to synthetically read and write DNA. An idea as to how the end organism would work and look like can be modelled with the help of CAD(Computer Aided Designing). Some of the basic yet important technologies used are a) DNA and gene synthesis b) sequencing c) Microfluidics d) Modularity e) Modeling and f) Synthetic transcription factor. These 6 technologies are imperative to create a successful synthetic organism which can helpful in the field of Drug delivery, Designed proteins, Biosensors, Biological computers, Cell transformation and Nucleic acid system.
Synthetic biology has raised serious ethical concern regarding the formation of life out of scratch. Butlet’s face it,it isn’t the first that a field in biology that has emerged and has faced any downside to it. The 3 major ethical aspects of synthetic biology are 1)Bio-safety 2)Biosecurity and 3) Creation of new life forms. These words might sound familiar to you as before the production of any new drug/medicine biosafety measures are regarded highly important. The most important ethical question out of the three is the “Creation of new life” as it is not normally considered during drug trail or drug formation. And whenever any human has tried to imitate “God” a major concern is raised, whether everything would be as merry as nature itself? And honestly the raised concerns is of utmost importance. The potential of any new form of life is unknown unless they are observed, they can be harmful or harmless, or can change the course of humanity, the answer lies in the very invention that is being held back due to ethical reasons.
To conclude I would like to say that the responsible committee should look upon the considered invention before restricting or allowing the scientist to continue. They should also see to it that the invention is used in the near future.
By:
Syed Masood Ahmed
4th year Biotechnology
Crescent Bioinformatics Association 