Discovery
Building walls and walks
By Massie Santos Ballon
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:31:00 11/22/2008
Filed Under: Science (general), Construction & Property
SCIENTISTS are really good at pulling things apart to understand the various components that make up life, said Stanford University bioengineering professor Drew Endy. Unfortunately, he added, they’re not so good at putting the pieces back together again.
With that observation, Endy began his talk on the merits of synthetic biology during a debate held Nov. 17 in San Francisco, California by the Long Now Foundation.
Synthetic biology has two definitions. One is redesigning a biological system that already exists to make it more ordered, which usually means something that makes more sense to the human mind. A company in California known as Amyris Biotechnologies is using this approach to make bacteria produce large enough quantities of the antimalarial drug artemisinin to drive the cost of the medication down so developing nations can afford it. The drug is expected to be available for use by 2010.
Synthetic biology
Amyris is also turning its attention to the biofuel market, again using reengineered bacteria to develop a low-cost biodiesel that could eventually be used in cars or airplanes.
Another interpretation of the term “synthetic biology” is designing and developing a biological system that didn’t previously exist. Craig Venter, one of the first to have his own entire genome completely sequenced and accessible to the public, has founded a company called Synthetic Genomics focused on designing and developing more efficient and higher-yielding bacteria and plants from the genomic level up that can be used to make alternative fuels such as biodiesel.
Countering Endy’s visions of the promise of synthetic biology, Jim Thomas, the research program manager of the Canada-based ETC Group, argued that engineering such organisms could be dangerous, not just because of the threat they pose to the environment if released into the wild, but also because of the livelihoods threatened by the commercialization of such scientific and technological progress.
Thomas argued that if scientists really wanted to use synthetic biology to understand life, then the work should be restricted solely to the laboratory rather than commercialized. Researchers would need at least a generation, possibly a lifetime, to understand what scientists have engineered, he said, and there’s too much uncertainty involved. And the engineered organisms could outcompete local species if it escaped the lab and made its way into the local ecosystems.
Endy later responded to this argument by noting that engineered organisms generally don’t fare well outside of laboratory conditions specifically designed to promote their survival.
But Thomas’ strongest feelings involved the idea that synthetic biology shouldn’t be commercialized such as companies like Amyris and Synthetic Genomics are doing because of the human consequences. He cited the antimalarial work done at Amyris as an example of how such promoting such work could cost people their jobs.
Possible consequences
If, he said, it was true that “anything that could be made from a plant can now be made by a microbe in a vat” as the company’s founder claimed, then many farmers who grow artemisinin on their lands would lose income from their crops because drug companies would choose to buy the cheaper drug produced by bacteria.
Despite his strong antitechnology stance, Thomas concluded by indicating that he’s not against scientific and technological progress as a whole in a discussion with Endy and prompted by questions from the audience. Rather, he said, people needed more time to think about all the possible consequences of engineering organisms and then rapidly commercializing their applications, scaling up their production too quickly and then considering the effects of their actions later.
The polite debate ended with neither side ceding to the other and offered the audience a chance to think about the pros and cons of an emerging scientific field.
E-mail the author at massie@massie.com.
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