Are Our Cellular Creations at Risk of Revolt?
The nascence of synthetic biology offers exciting prospects for innovation and concerns of organisms gone wild.
Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein is a timeless story, one that remains relevant in modern pop culture because it speaks to a human fear that attempting to wield the same power as the gods or nature will yield negative consequences. An adaptation of the Prometheus myth, this tale links the human fear of being god-like, or controlling nature and having it all go wrong. This fear, represented in myths and stories throughout time such as the Icarus myth or more modern adaptations like Jurassic Park, has come into a new era with the birth of synthetic biology. The ability to edit a genome gives scientists a power that no being has possessed before, and in that there is logical place for fear. If the history of earth were a 12 hour clock, the existence of humans would be 1 minute and 17 seconds old and the time in which humans have understood the concept of genetics would be a mere blip. This code which has been shaped and edited by nature since the first unicellular organisms appeared in the primordial goo (4 hours in on the 12 hour clock, or seven hours, 58 minutes, and 43 seconds prior to the emergence of humans) and suddenly this power has moved out of the hand of nature and into the hands of a relatively new species, allowing genetic sequences to be edited and written anew.
In the context of time and evolutionary history, it is easy to understand the apprehension that comes with engineering genetic sequences. But, to put this time in perspective, in the few hundred years since the Western industrial revolution, humans have wreaked havoc on the environment of this planet. If creative and careful uses of synthetic biology can aid humanity in reversing some of these egregious effects, it is well within the scope of science to look into environmental applications of synthetic biology. While the ethical and philosophical concerns over “playing god” are interesting, the longer humanity continues on the current path of environmental destruction, the harder it will be to innovate solutions and save the planet.
Philosophy aside, there are valid prescient concerns about applications of synthetic biology outside of the lab. Primarily with new genetic sequences it is hard to predict the ways in which these novel genomes will interact with and affect the natural world. While every aspect of a genomic machine has been programmed and tested, there are still concerns that they could mutate or get out of the control of the inventor and cause further damage to already delicate ecosystems. This, however, is not reason enough to cut off synthetic biology funding altogether, but instead to further research and develop the cellular machines. More prolific research and better public understanding of synthetic biology are the keys to better synthetic organisms.
Another common concern is that the theory of synthetic biology could be utilized by individual terrorists or unfriendly nations to synthesize biological weapons.
The genetic code for something like anthrax or the plague or the poliovirus, spanish influenza, or ebola, however, is not something your everyday criminal could whip up in their basement. Not only does the creation of a synthetic organism take tremendous amounts of laboratory training and time, one would need access to expensive machinery and a lab setting. According to an article published in Frontiers in Public Health there are four main myths that contribute to this fear and, when assessed from evidence in the field, the likelihood of a synthetic bioweapon is low. These four myths are that:
“synthetic biology is de-skilling biology and making it easier for terrorists to exploit advances in the biosciences, synthetic biology has led to the growth of a DIY biology community, which could offer dual-use knowledge, tools, and equipment for bioterrorists seeking to do harm. DNA synthesis has become cheaper and can be out-sourced, and this will make it easier for terrorists to create biological threat agents, synthetic biology could be used to design radically new pathogens, terrorists want to pursue biological weapons for high consequence, mass casualty attacks”
That being said, synthetic biologists should be conservative in their applications of synthetic biology for environmental crises as there are some situations in which a good solution already exists and improvement upon that is not necessarily productive. According Ronald Atlas, a professor of Biology at University of Louisville the use of synthetic biology to approve oil spill clean up efforts is unnecessary as “..the necessary microbes are already present… Fertilizer addition in some cases, e.g. the exxon Valdez spill, have greatly enhanced the speed at which the indigenous microbes biodegrade the contaminating hydrocarbons. Since the microbes are already there synthetic biology would not seem to have a significant role in treatment of petroleum contaminants.”
Though these concerns are valid, and it is true that synthetic biology is not a panacea, the largest “pro” of synthetic biology is that scientists can continue to work on it and innovate. By no means is it a stagnant science, and the creativity within the lab allows scientists to innovate around potential concerns. As with all innovations, it is vital to keep a healthy dose of scepticism and to challenge the innovations to be the best possible.
