X Men: Fascinating Dreams or Imminent Reality
by Anshuman MiraniWhile the X-men series, the animation as well as the original comic, is a big source of entertainment and fascination for most, many bio technologists around the world are probably taking a great deal of inspiration from it as well. For those who are not familiar with the concept of X-men, they are “mutants” with special and amazing powers, which they (of course) use for saving the world from others like them. As amazing as it may sound, a new branch of Biotechnology known as Synthetic Biology promises to have immense potential for doing something quite similar, creating biological systems with new and improved properties.
What is Synthetic Biology?
Synthetic biology is a new area of research that combines science and engineering
in order to design and build novel biological functions and systems. Natural
biological systems process information, materials, and energy. Our understanding
of these systems is rapidly advancing. Unfortunately our ability to use biology
as a technology to process information, materials, and energy as we desire is
limited by our understanding. To circumvent these limits, a field of study is
emerging based on intentional engineering of biological systems. This Synthetic
Biology is focused on the intentional design of artificial biological systems,
rather than on the understanding of natural biology. It builds on our current
understanding while simplifying some of the complex interactions characteristic
of natural biology.
A team of dedicated teachers and students at MIT have taken the first step towards development of engineered biological systems by developing counters - devices that count from, say, 1 to 32. But here's the catch: The counters’ design won't be electronic, but biological. They won't be made of transistors, but DNA. And they won't be inserted into breadboards, but living bacteria.
This project is being undertaken by students of Prof. Drew Endy. While Prof. Endy is keen on counters at the moment (they might have practical uses; for example, indicating how many times a given cell has divided since the counter was last reset), they're just stepping-stones to a new era in biology. Last year, his students programmed bacteria to form polka-dotted colonies. The year before, they designed microorganisms that blinked like Christmas lights. But the real purpose of the course isn't making a particular biological circuit; it's figuring out what it takes to make any biological circuit.
These new developments promise to take us into a new era and break away from the current trend of genetic engineering, which actually just involves transference of genes between organisms. Even though genetic engineering is proving to have quite a number of uses, it is hardly as challenging, as adventurous, as adrenalin pumping, as innovative and creative, and even as mind boggling as synthetic biology, which entails something quite different. It involves specification of each fragment of DNA that is present in an organism and determination of its function. Once these are known, it will obviously lead to the complete understanding of what exactly needs to be done for formation of a particular biological system, thereby leading to the formation of new designs and innovation in biological systems. The ultimate aim for these pioneers, in Prof. Endy’s own words is to “ reimplement life in a manner of choosing “.
And what might be expected of this field in the coming future? Within a decade, some hope to create bacteria able to mass-produce drugs that currently have to be painstakingly harvested from rare plants. Others talk about making viruses encased in protein sheaths that can be used to produce fabric with molecular circuitry woven into its warp and woof. In the more distant future, synthetic biologists envision building more complex organisms, like supercoral that sucks carbon out of the biosphere and puts it into building materials, or an acorn programmed to grow into an oak tree - complete with a nifty tree house.
And then there's the opportunity to add new chromosomes to the human genome, something that interested us right at the start of the article. This would usher in a new age of human augmentations and enhancements. Who knows, in a few years time, the person walking by might have magnetic powers like Magneto, or may be able to pop up claws of steel or heal himself like Wolverine.
Thus it is safe to say that the era of synthetic biology is looming on the horizon.
Note: You may download a review paper on this field titled "Life Engineering through Synthetic Biology" by Paras Chopra and Akhil Kamma.
April 2006, Jeev
http://www.dce.edu/jeev
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.