Synthetic biology is the design and building of novel organisms or biological systems. Sounds amazing, but we have been doing it to some degree for millenia, through husbandry of plants and animals, evolving them over time to drop the traits we didn't want (say, poison, aggression, horns) and promote the traits we did want (say, domestication, wool, meat, seeds).
With the advent of recombinant biology (where genes from one organism are added to another organism), we've been able to modify all sorts of creatures in important or bizarre ways. And, of course, genetically modified crops scare the Jeebus out of some fokls.
Microorganisms are commonly used to grow recombinant proteins, say, human proteins in E coli. But the current spirit of synthetic biology is to rebuild or build (micro)organisms to do some specific tasks or work.
I've spoken about Craig Venter many times. The work he's doing now, that should win him his 4th Nobel, is to specify a microbe that makes biodiesel. Indeed, we already use microorganisms to create biodiesel from various feed-stocks. But Venter takes it up a notch, to the point of specifying the _whole_ microorganism to do exactly the biochemical pathways he wants, rather than mutating or adding or subtracting a gene here or there.
Another person I'm watching is Drew Endy*, from MIT. He and a bunch of other adventurous bioengineers are creating a catalogue of genes that can be used as parts to easily build specific functions in microorganisms. Along with his cohorts, he's been running the iGEM competitions and creating a foundation called BioBricks. There's already a spinoff from these iGEM folks, called ginkgobioworks.
While many of the things I see coming out of this bioengineering seems like trying to shoe-horn a digital thinking onto analogue structures, the breath and depth of the creations, many of them just brilliant in their ingenuity or play, makes me overlook such a anti-digital peeve of mine.
Really, things are just beginning in this new age of synthetic biology. And it'll be really exciting for folks entering it at this stage. I'm looking forward to see how these bioengineering companies flourish.
BTW, the Boston Globe has a good write up of this new breed of bio-hackers.
Image from lofaesofa
*Endy is giving a Long Now seminar on 17 Nov 02008.
