Synthetic biologists are scientists who combine biology and engineering to design and create new traits or functions in living organisms. They use tools and techniques from different fields like genetics, computer science, and chemistry to modify and build biological systems for beneficial purposes.
Full definition
Most experts believe that the future holds many opportunities
for synthetic biologists to apply their skills in the private sector.
We are engaged in such partnerships and work closely
with synthetic biologists so that together we can better understand the promises and challenges.
But this means different things to different people, and even
among synthetic biologists there are different views about what research is most valuable and which directions should be pursued.
For now, though,
synthetic biologists know next to nothing about how to design a genetic code for an entirely novel organism.
Once synthetic biologists have come up with the algorithms, living things like yeast, bacteria and even grass can pump out products and solutions.
Over the decades,
synthetic biologists trying to expand life's genetic alphabet have come up with a handful of alternative genetic letters.
But
now synthetic biologists have discovered that six others can pull off the same trick, and there may be many more to find.
He and his team are describing biological phenomena at a minute level of detail, which could pave the way
for synthetic biologists to come.
«The field was over-ripe, but not moving as fast as it could,» says George Church, a geneticist and
synthetic biologist at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who played a leading role in the HGP.
Christina Smolke, an associate bioengineering professor at Stanford, describes the work
of synthetic biologists in simple terms.
Rice University scientists have created a toolkit for
synthetic biologists who need to precisely tune the input and output levels of genetic circuits.
The new technique, described online today in Science, «has extraordinary potential,»
says synthetic biologist Christopher Voigt of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, who was not involved in the study.
Synthetic biologist Drew Endy is leading efforts to make the natural world programmable — which means blurring the distinction between information and matter
However, GP - write consortium members and
other synthetic biologists are undaunted, planning numerous strategies to reach their goal.
Synthetic biologists aim to redesign bacterial cells for useful ends, such as producing biofuels or creating new types of medicines.
One development that has increased anxiety about the use of CRISPR — Cas9 by DIY biologists is a crowdsourcing venture
by synthetic biologist Josiah Zayner, founder of the Open Discovery Institute in Burlingame, California.
A blind date between world - weary conservationists and starry -
eyed synthetic biologists could be the start of a life - saving relationship.
Today SynBERC is a major trainer of
new synthetic biologists, running dozens of synthetic - biology - related courses at partnering institutions: the University of California, Berkeley, the University of California, San Francisco, MIT, Harvard University, and Prairie View A&M University in Texas.
Synthetic biologists come predominantly from biology and engineering, but they also come from chemistry, physics, mathematics, and computer science.
Chemist Daniel Nocera of Harvard University and his team joined forces with
synthetic biologist Pamela Silver of Harvard Medical School and her team to craft a kind of living battery, which they call a bionic leaf for its melding of biology and technology.
«It's an important step to creating a living cell where the genome is fully defined,» says
synthetic biologist Chris Voigt of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
Science is creative, exciting and future - oriented and
most synthetic biologists, like most people, do want to «make life better».
They work with
synthetic biologists within the Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation, a partnership between King's and Imperial College London
Isaacs, Jesse Rinehart, Alexis Rovner, and
fellow synthetic biologists at Yale call these new bacteria genomically recoded organisms (GROs) because they have a new genetic code devised by the team of researchers.
Graduate student Emily Thomas,
synthetic biologist Jonathan Silberg and their colleagues built upon established techniques that attach bio-orthogonal (noninterfering), artificial amino acids to transfer RNA (tRNA), which are used by ribosomes to synthesize proteins.
And a voluntary program is already under way where companies screen DNA orders for sequences of dangerous pathogens to
spot synthetic biologists up to no good.
Synthetic biologist Reshma Shetty predicts that we will eventually engineer organisms to grow everything that we manufacture today.
Off - the - shelf molecular parts could
allow synthetic biologists to create new medications and biofuels or to make microbes with the capacity to destroy pollutants and other nuisances.
In August, Stanford
synthetic biologist Christina Smolke and her team announced successfully using genetically modified baker's yeast, one strain to convert glucose into the opioid hydrocodone and another strain to create thebaine, an opioid precursor.
Harvard
synthetic biologist Yaakov Benenson is developing implantable computers capable of detecting chemical changes inside a cell.
But a mammalian genome is a different prospect, says
synthetic biologist Tom Ellis of Imperial College London, an Sc2.0 collaborator who attended the Harvard meeting.
So, finally, the promised early warning sign to watch for: If biologists start reporting the discoveries of new levels of modularity — and in particular,
if synthetic biologists can modify those encapsulation schemes — then watch out.
«Proof - of - principle» for
synthetic biologists opens doors to myriad applications — such as monitoring the environment or the growth of tumors
«We wanted a system that would be easier to scale up to collect more than one piece of information,» says
synthetic biologist Timothy Lu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
Because synthetic biologists can get the same amino acid from multiple codons, they can avoid troublesome DNA repeats by swapping in different codons that achieve the same effect.
This could
let synthetic biologists generate tissues on demand, such as insulin - producing β cells, or cartilage - producing chondrocytes.
Although the current circuits are a proof of concept, both Lu and Wong say
synthetic biologists want to use them to create new medical therapies.