Newspaper Page Text
4 Synthetic biology’ offers reasons for hope, fear
> By Robert S. Boyd (KRT)
Knigbt Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON — When
scientists announced the
* reconstruction of the lethal
[‘1918 Spanish flu virus this
> . month, they opened a window
[ pn a with booming new research
■' field enormous promise
' for good — or for harm.
t. ’ Known as “synthetic biol¬
ogy,” it’s the artificial cre
. ation of DNA, genes and cells
that mimic, or surpass, natu
i ral systems. Dozens of labo
t ratories around the world —
j cial some public, have begun some commer¬ churn
f — to
out materials to make syn
j thetic drugs, vaccines, pollu
t tion sensors, even biological
J computers.
i Some experts warn that
J such artificial systems could
t be accidentally or deliberate
* fy released into the environ
I ment, possibly with harmful,
’• even deadly, effects. A clever
bioterrorist, for example,
idight be able to re-engineer
[‘an .the smallpox virus and cause
epidemic. People would
*!have no immunity against
'. such an artificial organism.
An article in the Nov. 9
/issue of the magazine New
Scientist pointed out that a
terrorist could order the genes
to make smallpox or bird flu
to be sent to him through the
mail. The gene sequences are
publicly available, and there’s
no system to prevent their
misuse.
“If we want to make a new
organism, we need oversight,
maybe regulation,” said Lisa
Geller, a lawyer who special¬
izes in high-tech products at
the Wilmer, Cutler &
Pickering law firm in
Washington. “Hopefully,
nothing bad will happen.”
Alarms about possible
negative consequences of bio¬
logical tinkering aren’t new.
Genetic modification of
plants and the cloning of ani¬
mals, for example, are highly
controversial, even though
these operations use natural,
not synthetic, raw materials.
Author Michael Crichton
wrote a best-selling science
fiction novel, “Prey,” about
artificial particles taking over.
To perform synthetic biol¬
ogy, scientists use the tools of
modern biochemistry to add,
% subtract or alter the tiny units,
,* called nucleotides, that make
\ up the DNA in a gene. They
can, say, change a “C” to an
•I “A,” or vice versa, in the
' four-letter genetic alphabet.
’ They then insert tiny
can a
Jr ring of modified DNA, called
- a plasmid, into a bacterium to
[ piake it do something it did
**n?t do before, such as produce
Insulin for diabetics.
.V “We can design DNA to
i encode anything you can
./think of,” said Pamela Silver,
Y' microbiologist at the
♦department [♦Harvard Medical School’s
of Systems
biology in Boston. The
*[ggnie is out of the bottle. 99
■« H* For example, Blue Heron
* **
* 'biotechnology, a private com
;.pany in Bothell, Wash.,
' qoasts on its Web site that it
- “pan synthesize any gene,
regardless of sequence, com¬
plexity or size, with 100 per
•[ cent accuracy.”
J« Genemed Synthesis Inc.,
,J iti South San Francisco, says
'.if can create synthetic genes
/containing Yiucleotides up to 15,000
in two or three
.weeks.
VM &( I hope people wake up
Sand realize this is a whole
‘ \new Ward, biology,” said Peter
author of a new book
•Yelled “Life as We Do Not
'-Know It.”
" * “In the last five years,
4* V
9 *
We’ve come to realize that we
(,‘ctm make microbial life in a
'.lot more ways than Mother
/iJarth did,” said Ward, an
^expert on alien life at the
v I University of Washington in
Seattle.
• The first complete artifi
J cial creature, the vifus that
> causes polio, was assembled
Jat the State University of
• Hew York in Stony Brook, in
•'E<ong Island, N.Y., in 2002.
[ The next year, a virus that
- p/eys on bacteria was manu
Yfactured from scratch at the J.
'Craig Venter Institute in
; Rockville, Md.
Venter now has a govem
'rnent contract to construct an
artificial bacterium, an organ
i
1
ism much larger and more
complicated than a virus.
To build an artificial bio
logical system, Silver said,
scientists can draw on a set of
synthetic “modules” fir parts,
much like an electronics engi¬
neer designing a new comput¬
er chip.
The Massachusetts Ins
titute of Technology in
Cambridge maintains a
Registry of Standard Biolog-
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7 v
ical Parts (http://parts.mit
.edu), which contains thou¬
sands of bits and pieces of
genes, proteins and other
components of living sys¬
tems.
There’s a part to make
nerve fibers in the brain glow
so doctors can detect them in
an MRI scan. Another part is
used in “bacterial factories
to produce insulin.
Silver's lab is designing
cells that can do rudimentary
computing.
“We’re working on a cell
that can count to two,” she
said. Such a “bio-counter”
could keep track of the num
ber of times a cell divides,
thus determining its age. That
can be important in under
standing cancer or
Alzheimer’s disease.
Some other examples of
synthetic biology at work:
FORSYTH COUNTY NEWS —Thursday, November 24,2005
• The Gates Foundation,
founded by Microsoft
Chairman Bill Gates, has
donated $40 million to the
University of California,
Berkeley, to design a low-cost
synthetic drug to treat malar
ia, one of the world’s top
killers,
• Israeli scientists have
used DNA molecules to build
transistors, the building
blocks of computer circuits.
PAGE 11A
• Researchers at the
University of Colorado in
Boulder have synthesized a
molecular “water wheel
made out of a few hundred
atoms for use in miniature
medical pumps.
• Students at Silver’s lab
in Boston have engineered
bacteria to write letters or
draw patterns on a screen.
“It’s kind of a biological Etch
A Sketch,” Silver said.