Technology and nature always seem to be in opposition to each other. But what if we could discover a more natural technology? In other words, what if we could make technology more natural?
Nature appears to be constantly protecting itself from its surroundings. Instead of being a competitor to nature, which is the endless source of inspiration for progress, there is something we can do: A more natural technology.
Let's start by introducing Synthetic Biology and Synbio. We need to ask Nadine Bongaerts, our Vice President at Hello Tomorrow (HQ), who is a researcher in Synthetic Biology at INSERM, because Nadine is the right person to define and explain this field. Nadine has dedicated her entire career to engineering and has explored the almost infinite ways in which nature and technology intertwine.
So, let's start from the beginning. Nadine, what exactly is synthetic biology?
Synthetic biology is a mix of disciplines aimed at redesigning nature and even creating life from scratch. The point we aim to reach is still very far, but we are making progress as we design organisms that can produce useful things for humanity.
How? Let’s explain it this way:
Nature produces an almost infinite number of chemicals and is incredible at designing them to be harmless to the environment like a spider web. Yes, the chemistry of our human nature gives us a lot, but we often produce too many toxic by-products in the process. Synbio can turn cells into micro-factories that produce fuels, plastics, medicines, food additives, fragrances, and very complex molecules that even human chemistry cannot create. So yes, we now know how to produce spider silk en masse without disturbing the spiders!
Eradicating CANCER!
We can also use the cells we mentioned to reprogram our cells. Since the discovery of CRISPR Cas as a gene-editing tool, making changes to the human genome has become significantly easier. As a result of these developments, new therapies are already underway. We're talking about a system that helps us treat blindness, sickle cell anemia, or programming-related diseases, even restructuring or reprogramming our immune cells.
Finding NEW DRUGS!
As bacteria become more resistant to antibiotics, discoveries take on a tough but vital task. Antibiotics typically target a specific enzyme found within bacteria. Enzymes are tiny biological nanomachines that cells use to perform all sorts of tasks, like transporting substances in and out of the cell or converting sugar into energy. Some of these enzymes are crucial for bacteria, and blocking them with antibiotics kills the bacteria. You need to continuously test hundreds of thousands of molecules that kill bacteria. For pathogenic bacteria that grow very slowly, this is a real problem. Because it means you have to wait a long time to see if a molecule has any effect, and experiments can take weeks.
Let's take an example.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is the name of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. Unfortunately, Mtb grows extremely slowly, making it quite challenging to work with. So what do we do? At our laboratory, we use synthetic biology to discover new antibiotics against tuberculosis before testing molecules on the tuberculosis bacteria. So instead of Mtb, we are using a harmless laboratory bacterium that grows almost 200 times faster than Mtb. Just as we use mice as a model organism to test human drugs, we use engineered lab bacteria as a "mouse model" for "tuberculosis bacteria." This can make the discovery of a new drug or treatment much faster.
So synthetic biology applications could have a big impact on our planet, right?
Of course. Here’s an example;
Many viruses reach humans by transporting themselves through insects. For example, the Zika virus that is often transmitted to humans through mosquito bites. With synthetic biology, we have the opportunity to prevent the spread of viruses like Zika. Typically, when two mosquitoes mate, the chance that a specific gene is inherited from either the mother or father mosquito is 50%. However, when a mosquito carrying a disease gene mates with another mosquito, the chance of inheriting that gene becomes 100%. When the selected gene makes baby mosquitoes infertile, you can imagine that every new generation would not be able to reproduce. Because this way, harm is possible. As a result, this could lead to the extinction of all mosquito species and thus the cessation of the virus's spread.
There is currently a lot of debate about this technology. How safe is it to apply this method? Is it a better option than bombing mosquitoes with toxic pesticides? Additionally, what are the long-term effects on an ecosystem? Answers to these questions are currently unclear, and more research is needed.
Well, now that we know about Synbio in broad strokes and its power to affect our lives, let’s dive a little deeper because Synbio doesn’t seem like an easy success!
Giving a new instruction to a cell affects and triggers thousands of ongoing reactions. Unfortunately, when this happens, we do not have the right tools to predict exactly how the cells will behave. Therefore, creating solutions with synthetic biology often means trying various genetic software versions and assessing countless conditions to achieve the desired result. Recent developments in AI could help us make better choices, and thanks to robots, we can test far more combinations than with manual experiments. Hence, robotics and artificial intelligence are essential technologies to make synthetic biology more efficient and faster.
Yes, after grasping all the basic concepts in Synthetic Biology, as a bonus, let’s talk about something extraordinary in this field:
Storing data in DNA has been a crazy idea floating around for a long time. However, recent developments have suggested that it may be close to becoming a reality. Transforming our digital data into a binary code within a DNA spiral is actually less complex than it seems. The whole challenge is that writing and reading DNA can be somewhat expensive. Storing this article in DNA will cost about $15,000, and reading it back will cost about $4,000. But we think the price should drop in the near future. With this way of data storage, we would only need 1 kg to store all the data in the world. This could be a solution to the astonishing amount of data we create.
Isn't that promising?
In summary, what is really interesting about synthetic biology is that it forces us to "rethink" technology. We see technology and nature as opposites. However, when it comes to the technology of human engineering biology, that is not natural. If you ask me, nature will always be a technological masterpiece. So why do we perceive technology as something unnatural? We are adding new biotechnologies to the evolutionary inventory.
In the future I envision, everything from the spider silk dresses we will wear to the biofuels we will put in our cars and the engineered bacteria we will use to detect early signals, all the way to medicines will be made with synthetic biology. The new bio-revolution has just begun and is unstoppable!
Do you want to learn more about Synthetic Biology? Join our Global Summit and meet leading scientists and entrepreneurial scientists!
Excerpt from the interview with Nadine Bongaerts.
