Synthetic biology

John

Just happened across this Newsweek article about synthetic biology. The basic premise seems to be that we can't make bacteria do exactly what we want (in terms of producing proteins needed to cure diseases or producing fuel that can be used instead of fossil fuels) so we'll build new organisms that can. It's like meccano for really big intelligent kids.

It sounds incredibly useful (if they can do it) but you have to wonder at the implications. Like what are the chances of us being able to control these new organisms and not allow them to mutate in the real world and start competing with natural species.

Thoughts?

Red Hand

Hasn't that been going on for a while? Didn't they engineer sheep or goats to produce insulin in their milk a few years ago?

John

That's not the same thing. Inserting genes into other existing species has been done for years (decades for bacteria and several years for mice which you can insert human genes into too). This is completely different, this is creating an organism from scratch, i.e. deciding what all the genes will be and designing it for your needs. This is serious WOW territory for me!

tallaght01

Is this not how they built stephen hawkins? :P

DrIndy

Thought that research was originally dropped about 10 years ago as it was possible then to create a superbug which would have all the lethal genes from a bacteria without all the extras which the immune system can use to recognise the pathogen and kill it?

Hence ultimate bioterrorist weapon and a completely lethal pathogen.....

John

Well I'm sure if someone wanted to do it for those reasons they would just go ahead and build a secret lab to do so. It's not like if the US stopped the Manhattan project that the Nazis would have stopped their nuclear research.

tallaght01

Yea but presumably all the methods etc would be published, making it easier for the process to be reproduced in some terrorist's lab. If the technology isn't there in the first place, terrorists will have a lot more work to do it from scratch.

John

True but if you hold back on everything just because terrorists might use it then why do anything? Surely a way of making fuels and medicinal products easily and cheaply outweighs the risk of terrorists making a bioweapon which would bite them in the ass (if they make a virulent pathogen that can't be cured then if they and their allies/families catch then they're doomed too).

tallaght01

The bioterrorism issue is way outside my area of expertise, i have to admit. However, on principle I'm not sure that producing something that could be manipulated into a bug that could wipe out civilisation is worth it, for the sake of cheaper drugs and fuel.
Having said that, it's a balance issue, and I'm sure people who are brighter than me will tackle that issue when it arises.
I'm interested in knowing what we'll actually achieve here though. I'm a little confused about what's being proposed.
What will be the advantage of producing the bacterium/organism from scratch be?. It's the genetic material that we're interested in, so what's wrong with plasmid insertion etc? If they're looking for bacteria that can produce anti-malarial meds for eg, then why do we need to build the bacterium from scratch? Why not modify it's genome?
I'm sure there are answers too all these questions, but it's been a while since I've been involved in lab science, and they're not coming to mind straight away.

r3nu4l

Wow, that is fascinating! So I assume the idea is to create organisms that can repliacte themselves, including lipid membranes etc?

An easy way to control them would be to create organisms without certain synthetic genes (syngenes?) necessary for replication.

The product of this essential missing syngene could be supplied in replication-limiting amounts to the lifeform so that only a certain number of divisions can be made before replication stops. Perhaps there could be apoptotic syngenes that are triggered by the supply of a second chemical to the organisms when they have completed their job?

Jimoslimos

tallaght01 wrote:

I'm interested in knowing what we'll actually achieve here though. I'm a little confused about what's being proposed.
What will be the advantage of producing the bacterium/organism from scratch be?

That's the whole point of pure blue-sky research - there is no apparent visible reason or profit doing it. The value of money over information and knowledge is a sad reality in modern science.

tallaght01

Jimoslimos wrote:

That's the whole point of pure blue-sky research - there is no apparent visible reason or profit doing it. The value of money over information and knowledge is a sad reality in modern science.

I'm all for purely academic research, but this is being put forward as a means to solve particular problems, such as fuel shortages and inability ot produce certain medicines efficiently. So really i was wondering where the advantage is in terms of the problems this is supposed to be solving.

Could it be a surface protein issue or something like that? or something to do with their membrane characteristics?

r3nu4l, I think your syngenes idea is a good one, but presumably if these bugs were to be used in industry, they would need to replicate in enormous quantities to produce whatever they're producing in large enough amounts more efficiently than industry can at the moment?

John

Well if the brewing industry can use microrganisms at an industrial level, I'm sure a petrol brewing factory could be operated in a similar way. It's bound to be quicker in any case than waiting for new oil and gas stocks and also I imagine it could be engineered to be far cleaner than nuclear power. Those would be the two main advantages in terms of alternative fuel.

tallaght01

Fair enough, but what I keep trying to get at is what would be advantage in creating micro-organisms from scratch over manipulating their genetic material? That's the bit I'm not entirely sure about.

John

Well from what I can tell from the limited amount of information in the Newsweek article is that you can just put in the few genes you want so that you can fine tune their life cycle to be completely optimal for your goals where as you're restricted with how the extant species lives with genetic modification.