Synthetic Biology and Genomics

Synthetic Biology and Genetic Engineering

Technologies that contribute to the overall practice of synthetic biology themselves have precipitated concern or controversy. The de novo synthesis of DNA, sometimes called synthetic genomics, has been used to construct “from scratch” viruses, genes, and complete genomes of a variety of organisms. Additionally, synthetic biology uses the complete suite of standard recombinant DNA technologies. Those technologies themselves have been used for sometimes-controversial applications, such as in genetically modifying food crops. In this way, synthetic biology is contentious both because of the processes involved and the products produced.

Many researchers, both synthetic biologists and engineers, as well as social science and humanities researchers, have looked at aspects of synthetic biology and synthetic genomics to try to understand if and how this research and its applications differ from previously introduced biotechnologies with respect to safety, the need for governance, and societal impacts.

Further, concerns about intellectual property rights, particularly as they relate to ownership, have emerged both from philosophical and ethical analyses (are synthetic organisms truly new; and if they are, can they be “owned”?) and from the emerging “open access” community.

The Science and Engineering Components of Synthetic Biology

Synthetic biology is built on a number of biological technologies and engineering approaches to construction. Even in the face of new approaches to constructing DNA and inserting it into cells, a key set of technologies is essentially the same as those developed 35 years ago as “recombinant DNA” technology. The ability to “cut and paste” small- to medium-sized pieces of DNA (up to approximately the size of a single gene) remains critical.

However, the technologies for generating ever-larger pieces of DNA and the ability to construct many new pieces of DNA at the same time, [Page 862]including the option of synthesizing de novo whole genes and genomes, is making its way into everyday biology and engineering. Researchers have a number of different options in constructing genomes. They can buy small pieces of DNA (around 100 nucleotides in length), called “oligonucleotides,” and link them together in their own laboratories. Or they can purchase full-length genes or even genomes (from 500 nucleotides to tens of thousands of nucle-otides) from specialist firms. This latter approach is more expensive than the former but much more straightforward and requiring of less skill.

In 2002, Eckard Wimmer and his colleagues constructed infectious poliovirus using oligonucle-otides purchased from a commercial supplier. This synthesis and subsequent steps took approximately one year. In 2003, Hamilton Smith and his colleagues constructed a bacteriophage called phiX174, with a genome slightly smaller than poliovirus's. This construction took just two weeks. Since then, a number of different syntheses have been described, including a full-length replicate of the chromosome of a mycoplasma genome. (As yet, such chromosomes have not been used to make a living microbial cell.)

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