By Adaobi Rhema Oguejiofor
With the constant evolution of the world and the accompanying technological advancement, the stage is set for significant growth in not just science but biology as well. Over the years, one field that has experienced tremendous growth is synthetic biology. It involves genetic engineering done with digital tools including design software, standardized components, and process automation.
The word “synthetic” in biology usually refers to any organism which has been engineered by humans, often for research.
This branch of biology offers innovative approaches for engineering new biological systems or re-designing existing ones for useful purposes. It is a multidisciplinary field of biotechnology that involves engineering the genetic material of organisms, such as viruses, bacteria, yeast, plants, or animals to have new characteristics. It has the potential to create useful changes in crops, improve drugs, create stronger materials, and more efficient industrial processes. Scientists are also exploring the use of synthetic biology to address environmental challenges by engineering organisms to use carbon dioxide, produce biofuels for vehicles, and transform methane into biodegradable plastics.
History of Synthetic Biology
Classical genetic engineering has been existing since the early 1970s when recombinant DNA (rDNA) technologies were first developed. It was the first major breakthrough in synthetic biology. This discovery led to the creation of human insulin. It also paved the way for new scientific discoveries like gene mapping, cloning, and testing.
With these tools, the DNA molecule could be physically manipulated to unite together the desired sequences. This is a lot like the process of writing a stereotypical ransom note, where the words and letters are cut from magazines or newspapers and pasted together to form messages.
Cutting and pasting can be used to write any message or data, but it is a slow and tedious process. It is even much harder because the letters, words, and phrases are encoded in molecules, the scissors and glue are enzymes, and the cutting and splicing are happening at the nanoscale. Complicated lab techniques must be learned and expensive reagents and equipment are needed.
Many verification steps must be done to make certain that what is supposed to be happening in the various biochemical steps is actually taking place. This makes editing or eliminating malfunctioning elements very difficult. Overall, the challenges of recombinant DNA work limited both the number of people who could do genetic engineering and the complexity of the programs they could write.
Advanced synthetic biology came as a game changer as the DNA being manipulated is digital, just letters in a text file. Computer software is used to edit this code using specialised word processors. Technically, genetic engineering becomes no more difficult than software engineering or even writing an email message. Efforts can be focused on creating better designs. The work can be done using a laptop, from almost anywhere and when the design is finished, the digital DNA can be synthesised and printed.
Printing is very vital. If there is a single device that epitomizes synthetic biology, it is the automated DNA synthesizer. This machine is effectively a 3D printer for the DNA molecule. It works by chemically synthesizing short chains of DNA (oligonucleotides), then assembling them into longer segments. Error correction schemes are incorporated into the process and sequencing is performed on the product to ensure accuracy to the base pair.
Expert scientists, Gibson et al. 2010, noted that one of the technical advances that has significantly increased the ability to undertake synthetic biology has been to artificially synthesise deoxyribonucleic acids (DNA), and as a result, create DNA parts. So far, the peak achievement has been the synthesis and assembly of a small bacterial genome, which was transferred to a bacterial cell devoid of DNA to create a novel replicating micro-organism.
With synthetic biology, scientists use DNA sequencing to read the biological information stored in DNA. As this technology becomes more accurate, faster, and cheaper, scientists are building databases of DNA sequences to help them identify the biological functions of specific pieces of DNA. Complementing this work advances in computational tools such as artificial intelligence (AI) support rapid and iterative design and testing cycles to replace time-consuming lab experiments. For example, synthetic biologists could use machine learning to better predict the effect of changes they make to an organism.
Once equipped with information about the DNA’s function, synthetic biologists can edit or create the desired genetic material within an organism using genome-editing tools such as Clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats (CRISPR). Scientists can make these genetic changes far more rapidly using synthetic biology than with earlier methods, such as selective breeding over multiple generations. In addition, synthetic biologists can retool organisms to have uses they do not currently exhibit in nature. For example, scientists are engineering silkworms to produce spider silk rather than traditional silk.
Despite being in its early stages of development, synthetic biology has already generated a number of products that are being used in the world today ranging from DNA tests for food-borne pathogens, improved herbicides, more efficient biofuel, and faster-growing crops to new vaccines for HIV, flu, malaria, and other diseases, as well as bacteria that can break down oil spills or convert ethanol into gasoline and more.
Synthetic biology has a wide range of applications, from engineering bacteria to producing useful bio-products and designing microscopic sensors for environmental monitoring. For instance, in the healthcare sector, research on synthetic biology is driving significant advances in biomedicine, which will further lead to transformational improvements in healthcare. In 2018, June et al. noted that patients are benefiting from Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) technology, which engineers the immune cells (T-cells) of the patient to recognize and attack cancer cells.
Also, according to Dunbar et al., genetically engineered viruses are being used to correct defective genes in patients with inherited diseases such as Severe Combined Immune Deficiency (SCID) or epidermolysis bullosa.
In addition, with synthetic biology photosynthetic reducing power generated in plant chloroplasts can be harnessed for the light-driven synthesis of bioactive molecules such as Dhurrin, which protects plants against insects.
The technology has a promising future as research in the field has the potential to help solve many problems existing in today’s world, such as access to food and water for a growing population or reducing human dependency on fossil fuels. With its help, scientists will be able to design living organisms for specific purposes and use them in various industries such as medicine, agriculture, and biofuel production.
The future of synthetic biology is ever-changing and developing. With the recent advances in gene-editing technologies, there are more possibilities than ever for synthetic biologists to create new biological systems.