DIY Synthetic Biology

Synthetic biology has only been around since about 2004 when the first conference was held at MIT. As the name implies, it is the creation of biological material from scratch. For example, DNA can be created using just the four nucleotides called adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine or, as usually abbreviated, A, G, C, and T. In practice, it is cheaper simply to buy DNA strings (oligonucleotides) from labs like GenScript or DNA 2.0 that will create them to your custom design for as little as $0.39 per base pair, where a base pair is either C+G or A+T. Newer techniques are predicted soon to bring that cost down to 20,000 base pairs for one dollar.

Synthetic biology includes several different engineering strategies, including genome design and construction, protein design, natural product synthesis, and the construction of functional genetic circuits in cells and microorganisms. The "products" include, among others, biofuels, drugs, and genetically modified plants.  Much has been written about the potential benefits and dangers of those products, most recently in The New Yorker. But this posting is about Do-It-Yourself synthetic biology.

The computer revolution brought with it patents on software and some virtual software monopolies.  Likewise, patents on genetically modified materials could threaten the rapid development of synthetic biology.  One solution in the computing industry was a trend toward "free and open source" software. In synthetic biology, one solution is BioBricks, standard, unpatented, biological parts like DNA sequences of defined structure and function. A complete parts registry is maintained by Randy Rettberg at MIT. They are the Lego bricks of synthetic biology.

Which brings us to DIYbio.org, an organization that aims to help make biology a worthwhile pursuit for citizen scientists, amateur biologists, and DIY biological engineers who value openness and safety. SEED Magazine has a good review of them. They are basically a focal point for what's going on in the community.

It probably won't produce any Steve Jobs or lead to the biological version of Apple or Microsoft, but bringing people of very diverse backgrounds to look at biological systems is likely to produce some surprises.