An illustration of synthetic biology research into living systems and organisms. (U.S. Army)

Synthetic Biology is About to Disrupt Just About Everything

Synthetic biology — a set of emerging technologies enabling the modification and creation of living cells, organisms, and their building blocks — promises breakthroughs in fundamental biology and has possible applications in fields such as nutrition, antimicrobial resistance, and engineering, according to the GESDA Science Breakthrough Radar®.

By John Heilprin

December 16, 2024

Looking further into the future, the Radar envisions a landscape where advances in synthetic biology are commonplace, with technologies that allow not only for the modification of existing life forms but also the creation of entirely new organisms. This shift could have significant implications for how we approach challenges in agriculture, energy, disease treatment, and environmental conservation.

The field is advancing rapidly. Given its wide-ranging applications, the Radar says, synthetic biology needs to be developed with ethical and societal expertise to determine how decisions are made.

“The potential applications of synthetic biology are immensely varied,” it says. “For example, there is considerable potential to improve manufacturing, industry and agriculture. Synthetic biology enables new technologies such as bioelectronics and the creation of new materials. Bioplastics created from living organisms could replace at least some plastics from fossil fuels. Synthetic pesticides and gene drives may reduce crop losses and also cut costs.”

“In medicine and health, synthetic biology can help to develop genetic therapies for inherited diseases, to engineer new medicines and to design new cancer therapies. Finally, there are emerging applications in energy, climate and conservation. These include engineering at-risk organisms to be more resilient against environmental change and using micro-organisms to produce zero-carbon fuels such as green hydrogen.”

Junbiao Dai, a professor and deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shenzhen Institute of Synthetic Biology, told the 2024 GESDA Summit the international scientific research project that investigated the human genome as an operating system until 2003 set the stage for more breakthroughs.

“During the Human Genome Project, a lot of technology was developed,” Dai said of the project, which generated the first sequence of the human genome, most of which is the same in all humans.

“Potentially everyone in the world will get sequenced,” he said. “What if you could write a genome? That means you can reorganize all the genetic information. You can rewrite each line of your script for the operating system, and therefore it will allow you to repurpose or reprogram  anything which is biological.”

With animals and plants, he said, genomes could be redesigned and rewritten to make engineered organisms more productive or suited to a purpose: “It will not only increase the yield but also improve the food quality and nutrition, and potentially you will get more nutritional food for your personal health.”

 

Schematic of a machine learning-driven “design-build-test-learning” (DBTL) cycle in synthetic biology. The DBTL cycle is a framework in synthetic biology for developing organisms with desired functionalities. This figure was created using clipart from BioRender.com. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002116.g001

 

Synthetic biology’s promising ‘teenage years’

Given the wide-ranging applications, the Radar says synthetic biology should be “developed alongside ethical and societal expertise in order to shape how and why decisions are being made, and for whom.”

Cell-free synthetic biology is increasingly popular because it can explain biological functions apart from intricate cellular environments and it also is able to build increasingly complex biochemical systems in vitro, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne’s associate professor Sebastian Maerkl and PhD student Amogh Kumar Baranwal wrote in a May paper in Frontiers in Synthetic Biology.

“But cell-free transcription—translation systems are often only available in small volumes which has been a major challenge in the field,” they wrote. “Microfluidic technologies helped address this challenge by enabling miniaturization and implementation of robust multi-step workflows.”

A Nature Communications article in 2020 called synthethic biology one of the most hyped research topics this century. The authors, Imperial College London professor Tom Ellis and PhD student Fankang Meng, wrote that in 2010 “it entered its teenage years. But rather than these being a problematic time, we’ve seen synthetic biology blossom and deliver many new technologies and landmark achievements.”

Synthetic biology holds promise for developing algae and plants as future powerhouses for light-driven synthesis of desired high value compounds and bulk chemicals and facilitate transition to a bio-based society, according to University of Copenhagen professor Birger Lindberg Møller. “In all aspects of their lives plants are able to communicate with their surroundings by using complex biochemistry,” he says.

 

Plants and algae are the green chemists par excellence on planet Earth. They produce an immense number of bioactive natural products based on CO2 and solar energy. Many of these natural products play crucial roles in plant growth and adaptation to environmental challenges like climate change and are essential components as medicinal compounds, health promoting agents, flavors and fragrances. (University of Copenhagen Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences)

Where the science and diplomacy can take us

The 2024 GESDA Science Breakthrough Radar®, distilling the insights of 2,100 scientists from 87 countries, highlights the significant potential of synthetic biology to transform various fields over the next 5, 10, and 25 years. It tells us that the field holds the promise of accelerating development of new drugs, particularly to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and that tools like CRISPR for genome editing and AI capabilities for predicting biomolecular structures will become increasingly refined, resulting in advanced applications that could rewire organisms to fight diseases, create eco-friendly materials, and even restore extinct species.

The findings in the 2024 Science Breakthrough Radar®

Based on the Radar, here’s where we stand in several important areas:

5.4 Synthetic biology

In fundamental synthetic biology, faster and better genome editing and other technologies are enabling the development of heavily modified organisms. Because of the potential risks to humans and ecosystems, there is an urgent need to develop security measurements for synthetic biology.

Radar, page 284

5.4.1 Fundamental synthetic biomolecules

The aim of synthetic biology is to treat life as programmable matter and to reprogram it to serve human ends. This requires understanding the intricate mechanisms underpinning living cells and devising ways to manipulate those systems. Genome editing, for instance using CRISPR-Cas, is a key tool. DNA synthesis has become much faster and cheaper, enabling researchers to create microorganisms with wholly synthetic genomes from scratch. A major challenge is to create generic platforms for synthetic biology. These will improve the accessibility of the technology, especially in the developing world, and open the way to more repeatable experiments. 

5-year horizon: Synthesis tools mature
10-year horizon: Synthesis costs fall
25-year horizon: AI improves user access for synthesis

Radar, page 286

5.4.2 Manufacturing, industry and agriculture

The tools and products of synthetic biology have potential applications in manufacturing and many other industries, including farming. Much of this work is at an early stage and there are few commercial products as yet. Key challenges include scaling up lab-based experiments in a commercially viable way and controlling synthetic organisms and their interaction with their environment.

5-year horizon: Engineering starts to scale
10-year horizon: Rational design comes of age
25-year horizon: Synthetic biology is integrated into other technologies

Radar, page 287

5.4.3 Medicine and health

Synthetic biology is already being applied to some areas of medicine and there is considerable potential to expand its use. Many medicines are either sourced directly from living organisms or based on chemicals produced in nature. Synthetic biology has the potential to find many new candidate drugs and to produce medicines in cellular factories. Notably, the first synthetic vaccines have been made and shown to be effective.

5-year horizon: Human cells and genomes are re-engineered through AI
10-year horizon: Synthetic-cell therapies are customisable
25-year horizon: Organ production is programmable

Radar, page 288

5.4.4 Energy, climate and conservation

There are many theoretical applications of synthetic biology to environmental problems, including tackling biodiversity loss, pollution and climate change. Much of this research is at a preliminary stage.

5-year horizon: AI accelerates discovery
10-year horizon: Engineered organisms achieve climate resilience
25-year horizon: Biodiversity begins to be restored through engineering

Radar, page 289