Synthetic biology is not easy
September 19, 2014 6:44 AM   Subscribe

The assumption that synthetic biology makes it easy for anybody to “engineer biology” is not true. The underlying vision holds that well-characterized biological parts can be easily obtained from open-source online registries and then assembled, by people with no specialist training outside professional scientific institutions, into genetic circuits, devices and systems that will reliably perform desired functions in live organisms. This vision, however, does not even reflect current realities in academic or commercial science laboratories
posted by sammyo (13 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
My reaction to that proposition is the same as it is to everything along the lines of the inside-job 911 conspiracy theories. "They Would If They Could, But They Can't."
posted by StickyCarpet at 6:55 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


Synthetic biology isn't a likely source for purpose built threats to human health, I can understand that its still a myth being peddled about as I have to field questions from family friends all the time when it comes up on The News.

Talking about unnatural selection to evolve desired traits in pathogens is totes OK though as the Bad Guys have totally made that mental leap and its not like continuing discussion without any masking of the feared application could possibly further expose the wrong people to the right ideas.
posted by Slackermagee at 6:59 AM on September 19, 2014


I am frankly sort of astonished that anybody would think otherwise? I probably lead a sheltered life, but while I've heard of people saying that terrorists could, say, disperse already-existing anthrax, I have never heard anybody claim that non-experts could just whip up a new pathogen of their own.
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:59 AM on September 19, 2014


Sheesh, talk about a strawman.
posted by Dashy at 7:02 AM on September 19, 2014 [2 favorites]


So synthetic biology is as much as a thread as 3d printed guns... thanks for the update... we're safe for a few decades.... probably all this will hit right after they figure out fusion energy, and electricity becomes too cheap to meter. ;-)
posted by MikeWarot at 7:04 AM on September 19, 2014


I was at a DIY bio lab last night, building a DNA sequence by putting together shorter "lego block" sequences. It was surprisingly easy.

Or... it seemed easy, anyway, since I didn't have to design any of the building-block sequences, or pick out the necessary buffers and enzymes, or attach a magnetic bead to a piece of DNA. This is still high technology.

(Although, if we keep creating hordes of overeducated, underemployed, disgruntled biomed grad students, maybe we'll start having something to worry about...)
posted by clawsoon at 7:05 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


I would have thought that delivering more conventional pathogens or toxins en mass via fleets of wee drones would be a problem well before artificially-created superviruses would be.
posted by XMLicious at 7:48 AM on September 19, 2014


"Or... it seemed easy, anyway, since I didn't have to design any of the building-block sequences, or pick out the necessary buffers and enzymes, or attach a magnetic bead to a piece of DNA. This is still high technology."
Yeah, or so it seemed. After working through the bullshit on their page written to a high school level of genetic literacy, it doesn't look like their kit actually offers any capability my advisor didn't have in the 80s, and fails to explain very basic things that would be necessary for trouble shooting. This is just microbial cloning without any of the big words, actually useful tools, or contextual understanding. Also, magnetic beads attached to oligos were fancy and new maybe 10 years ago, but are really standard to molecular labs to buy in kits for things we can't just do ourselves.

There are maybe two or three labs in the world, like Drew Endy's, dipping their toes into a thing that could defensibly be called a new discipline of molecular genetics while running iGEM, which is indeed a neat teaching tool. However, I at least have yet to come across anything else that wasn't just transparently attempting to make money by convincing people that they understand molecular genetics without the hassle of genuine education. Metafilter went through this a couple of years ago when the project of another very successful bullshit artist was posted and he stopped by to attempt to answer some of our questions. Its a shame that pretty much any time the words synthetic biology are used to describe anything it is in relation to some scam that should be obvious with some basic genetic literacy, particularly when it is at its core such a neat concept, but there has never been much actual flame underneath all of the smoke and hype.
posted by Blasdelb at 8:32 AM on September 19, 2014 [6 favorites]


Thanks for the extra context, Blasdelb. They are aiming at precisely a high-school (or even junior high) level of experimenter, so the level of language is probably explained by that, though it would be nice to dig a little deeper in.
posted by clawsoon at 8:57 AM on September 19, 2014


One positive about the DIY bio lab I was at last night was that they were clear that most of our experiments wouldn't achieve what the project as a whole is aiming for (violacein production in E. coli). They sold that part of it as "real science" - exploring the unknown by doing experiments, many of which don't work out, all of which we can hopefully learn from.
posted by clawsoon at 11:36 AM on September 19, 2014


Yeah but think of the money to be made!
posted by sneebler at 12:32 PM on September 19, 2014


Much of the hardware developed to automate the assembly of building blocks has been re-purposed to run gangs of tests on large arrays of various collected biological samples. Turns out that there is a better chance of getting something useful that way.
posted by StickyCarpet at 1:55 PM on September 19, 2014


More efficient and more useful, sure, but less fun for me. :-)
posted by clawsoon at 2:08 PM on September 19, 2014


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