Synthetic biology
To develop organisms with novel or enhanced characteristics, this emerging field of study combines biology, engineering, and related disciplines' knowledge and techniques to design chemically synthesised DNA.
The creation of whole new signalling pathways, containing numerous genes and regulatory components (such as an oscillator circuit to initiate the periodic production of green fluorescent protein (GFP) in mammalian cells), is known as bioengineering as part of synthetic biology.
Furthermore, these kinds of synthetic organisms might be created to require non-natural materials for protein or nucleic acid synthesis, rendering them unable to thrive in the wild if they accidentally escaped.
When vesicles or containers (such as Oparin's coacervates) formed of tiny droplets of molecules that are organic like lipids or liposomes, membrane-like structures comprising phospholipids, aggregate, assembly occur.
For a variety of applications in biocomputing, bioenergy, biofuels, bioremediation, optogenetics, and medicine, it involves the standardisation of DNA components, engineering of switches, biosensors, genetic circuits, logic gates, and cellular communication operators.
This strategy, also referred to as "chemical synthetic biology," principally seeks to alter or enlarge the genetic codes of living systems utilising artificial DNA bases and/or amino acids.
In recent decades, researchers have created compounds that are structurally similar to the DNA canonical bases to see if those "alien" or xeno (XNA) molecules may be employed as genetic information carriers.
One method involves incorporating a specified unnatural, noncanonical, or xeno amino acid (XAA) into one or more proteins at one or more precise places using orthogonal enzymes and a transfer RNA adaptor from an other organism.
By using "directed evolution," which entails repeated cycles of gene mutagenesis (genotypic diversity production), screening or selection (of a specific phenotypic trait), and amplification of a better variant for the following iterative round, orthogonal enzymes are produced Numerous XAAs have been effectively incorporated into proteins in more complex creatures like worms and flies as well as in bacteria, yeast, and human cell lines.
As a result of canonical DNA sequence changes, directed evolution also enables the development of orthogonal ribosomes, which make it easier to incorporate XAAs into proteins or create "mirror life," or biological systems that contain biomolecules made up of enantiomers with different chiral orientations.
These developments have produced ground-breaking techniques for designing, assembling, and modifying DNA-encoded genes, materials, circuits, and metabolic pathways, enabling an ever-increasing amount of control over biological systems and even entire organisms.
[74] [75] [76][77] Only extensive modelling can enable the exploration of dynamic gene expression in a form suitable for research and design due to the numerous involved species and the intricacy of their relationships.
Examples of what researchers are creating using synthetic biology include: A biosensor refers to an engineered organism, usually a bacterium, that is capable of reporting some ambient phenomenon such as the presence of heavy metals or toxins.
One such system is the Lux operon of Aliivibrio fischeri,[84] which codes for the enzyme that is the source of bacterial bioluminescence, and can be placed after a respondent promoter to express the luminescence genes in response to a specific environmental stimulus.
These circuits are made up of transducer modules that filter the signals and activate a biological response, as well as carefully designed sensitive sections that attach analytes and regulate signal-detection thresholds.
Artificial enzymatic activity and subsequent effects on metabolic reaction rates and yields may develop "efficient new strategies for improving cellular properties ... for industrially important biochemical production".
[141][142][143] On Mars, in particular, synthetic biology could lead to production processes based on local resources, making it a powerful tool in the development of occupied outposts with less dependence on Earth.
[141] Work has gone into developing plant strains that are able to cope with the harsh Martian environment, using similar techniques to those employed to increase resilience to certain environmental factors in agricultural crops.
Synthetic life biology attempts to create living organisms capable of carrying out important functions, from manufacturing pharmaceuticals to detoxifying polluted land and water.
In fact, new therapeutic platforms, from the discovery of disease mechanisms and drug targets to the manufacture and transport of small molecules, are made possible by the logical and model-guided design construction of biological components.
[156] In the therapy of cancer, since conventional medicines frequently indiscriminately target tumours and normal tissues, artificially created viruses and organisms that can identify and connect their therapeutic action to pathological signals may be helpful.
This therapeutic anti-toxin is a fusion of four single-domain antibodies (nanobodies) that potently and broadly neutralize the two major virulence factors of C. difficile at the site of infection in preclinical models.
[156] The clustered frequently interspaced short palindromic repetitions (CRISPR)/CRISPR associated (Cas) system is a powerful method of genome engineering in a range of organisms because of its simplicity, modularity, and scalability.
Several DNA repair processes, including homology-directed recombination and non-homology end joining, can be used to accomplish the desired genome change (i.e., gene deletion or insertion).
The trials were a success as the patients remained in good health 7 years after implantation, which led a research fellow named Anthony Atala, MD, to search for ways to automate the process.
It is argued that most synthetic technologies are benign and are incapable of flourishing in the outside world due to their "unnatural" characteristics as there is yet to be an example of a transgenic microbe conferred with a fitness advantage in the wild.
[209] Juan Zarate, who served as Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism from 2005 to 2009, noted that "the severity and extreme disruption of a novel coronavirus will likely spur the imagination of the most creative and dangerous groups and individuals to reconsider bioterrorist attacks.
A 2007 paper identified key issues in safety, security, ethics, and the science-society interface, which the project defined as public education and ongoing dialogue among scientists, businesses, government and ethicists.
The commission stated that "while Venter's achievement marked a significant technical advance in demonstrating that a relatively large genome could be accurately synthesized and substituted for another, it did not amount to the "creation of life".
Federal guidelines on genetic manipulation are being proposed by "the President's Bioethics Commission ... in response to the announced creation of a self-replicating cell from a chemically synthesized genome, put forward 18 recommendations not only for regulating the science ... for educating the public".
