SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY

As per a study by the United States of America, due to climate change, one-third of all animal and plant species on the planet could face extinction by 2070.

Environmentalists consider synthetic biology or ‘synbio’ as a potential tool to preserve biodiversity and restore the natural ecosystem.

In the case of India, a draft foresight paper on synthetic biology released by the Department of Biotechnology has stressed the need for a national policy that can consolidate India’s stand on the issue.

What is synthetic biology?

• Synthetic biology combines biotechnological tools with ideas from engineering, computer sciences, and design thinking, and uses them to build new biological systems.
• Synthetic biology is a field of science that involves redesigning organisms for useful purposes by engineering them to have new abilities.
• The term ‘synthetic biology’ was first used by Barbara Hobomin in the year 1980, to describe the bacteria that had been genetically engineered or modified by using recombinant DNA technology.
• Synthetic biology refers to the science of using genetic sequencing, editing, and modification to create unnatural organisms or organic molecules that can function in the living systems.
• Synthetic biology enables scientists to design and synthesize new sequences of DNA from scratch.
• The term was used to describe the synthesis of unnatural organic molecules that function in the living systems.

More broadly in this sense, the term has been used with reference to efforts to redesign life.

What is the difference between synthetic biology and gene editing?

• Synthetic biology is similar to another approach called "genome editing" because both involve changing an organism's genetic code but these two approaches are different based on how the change is made.
• In synthetic biology, scientists typically stitch together long stretches of DNA and insert them into an organism's genome whereas, In genome editing, scientists typically use tools to make smaller changes to the organism's own DNA
• Synthesized pieces of DNA could be genes that are found in other organisms or they could be entirely novel and the Genome editing tools can also be used to delete or add small stretches of DNA in the genome.

What is the use of synthetic biology?

What is the use of synthetic biology?

• This technology is mainly used in the production of sustainable food for eg: Rice modified to produce beta-carotene, a nutrient usually associated with carrots, that prevents vitamin A deficiency. (Vitamin A deficiency causes blindness in 250,000 - 500,000 children every year and greatly increases a child's risk of death from infectious diseases.)
• It can help in developing synthetic organisms for vaccination to create natural products in a lab such as vanillin, the organic compound extracted from vanilla seeds, which can now be grown in yeasts with additional plant genomes.
• In the pharmaceutical industry, synthetic biology can be used to make natural compounds such as artemisinin used for the treatment of malaria and Car T cell therapy for cancer treatment.
• It is starting to be used in the fashion industry as well; some companies are exploring the possibility of dyeing jeans without producing hazardous waste.
• Then there are companies using it to deliver fixed nitrogen to plants instead of using fertilizers, engineering microbes to create food additives or brew proteins.
• Microorganisms are harnessed for bioremediation to clean pollutants from our water, soil, and air.
• An interesting application of synthetic biology is its usage for the capture of carbon dioxide from industrial emissions.

This synthetic biology technology would help us resolve some of society’s most imperative problems from infectious disease to drug development to the sustainability

Concerns related to the synthetic biology

Economic concerns:

• It can create a huge surge in the economy causing a shift towards biotechnology-based economies.
• This will mostly affect the rural economy and low-income tropical countries.
• Natural products are usually grown and harvested in low-income countries and this could be displaced by advancements in synthetic biology.

Environmental concerns:

• When a new species is created or when a species is intensely modified, the activity of species and their coexistence with other organisms is mostly unpredictable.

Ethical Concerns:

• The scientists would go in and edit the genes of human embryos, removing genetic material that codes for harmful or fatal diseases, creating genetically modified humans, and genetically engineering humans could accidentally give rise to new social inequalities.

Way forward

To achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals, there is a need to think innovatively and synthetic biology could full fill the SDG target. The need of the hour is to ecological balance and cut down pollution and plastic waste from our industrial processes and day-to-day activities.