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Yesterday marked the finale of Synthetic Biology 3.0. Tom Knight of MIT, considered a founder of the field, gave an inspirational keynote address laying out some of the near-term goals for the budding enterprise:
Continue reading "Leaving Zürich and Planning for Next Year" »
This morning, I noted the huge amount of combinations that could possibly occur for a 100 nucleotide RNA sequence. Peter Seeberger of ETH Hönggerberg, where Synthetic Biology 3.0 is being held, kicked the complexity up a notch by talking about carbohydrates. The trouble with carbohydrates is synthesis. Proteins and nucleotides are generally quite easy to synthesize through either chemical or biologic means. Carbohydrates present a formidable challenge however.
This morning, I noted the huge amount of combinations that could possibly occur for a 100 nucleotide RNA sequence. Peter Seeberger of ETH Hönggerberg, where Synthetic Biology 3.0 is being held, kicked the complexity up a notch by talking about carbohydrates. The trouble with carbohydrates is synthesis. Proteins and nucleotides are generally quite easy to synthesize through either chemical or biologic means. Carbohydrates present a formidable challenge however.
It may be hard to top some of this morning’s sessions, but we’ll see what the after-lunch crew has to add. I’ll be posting soon about some amazing carbohydrate work by Peter Seeberger of ETH Honggerberg, where the conference is being held, but I just wanted to direct to some of the other blogs covering Synthetic Biology 3.0.
The third and final day of Synthetic Biology 3.0 in Zürich, Switzerland is designed to address applications for synthetic bio. I was just blown away by a nice demonstration in the first talk this morning by Michael Famulok, of the University of Bonn.
I couldn’t resist snapping a shot of this poster put up by Etc. group for the evening poster session at Synthetic Biology 3.0 in Zürich, Switzerland.
Continue reading "Suddenly Synthetic (was Standing Beside Other Posters)" »
“When is secrecy justifiable?” asks Laurie Zoloth, a bioethicist from Northwestern University in a hurried presentation on the ethical challenges presented by synthetic biology at the third annual meeting on the topic in Zürich, Switzerland. She characterized the main arguments that have been made for and against synthetic bio referencing everyone from Kant to Sissela Bok, and Disney to Lucas.
Zoloth delineated the battle lines between scientists who think the technology is ‘cool,’ call them enthusiasts, and academics, ethicists, and pundits who urge caution. One person urging caution, Jim Thomas of the Etc. advocacy group (who has contacted me and even posted links to his own blog on my previous posts), got his say in the panel session that followed the talk. Some fireworks ensued.
In all the session on intellectual property at Zurich’s Synthetic Biology 3.0 meeting didn’t quite have the inspirational flair of its science based predecessors, but one talk in particular stood out. Stephen Maurer, a lawyer and adjunct faculty member at Berkeley presented as a case study for the murky intellectual property issues raised by synthetic biology a pending $500 million proposal by the UC school to partner with BP (the B stands for Beyond, now, not British as was formerly the case). For background see here, here and here.
BP is looking to capitalise on synthetic biology for the creation of biofuels and is looking both at Berkeley, considered one of its major hubs at the moment, and the University of Illinois to start setting up shop in an academic setting. Maurer has an intimate vantage, and an interesting point of view.
Continue reading "Rabble Rousing 3.0 (Surprise, Berkeley is the Source of the Upheaval)" »
Questions about the infamous Venter patent didn’t come up at Hamilton Smith’s talk this morning. Smith, a Nobel Laureate and well known as J.C. Venter’s right hand man talked about an ongoing project at the Venter Institute to define a minimal set of genes needed for life. The minimalist Mycoplasma genitalium has been the focus of study for its already sparse genome (it’s about 580 kb long and contains just under 500 genes).
Smith talked about three ongoing projects on M genitalium: 1) reducing the genome to its lowest number of necessary genes, 2) synthesizing and assembling a new M. genitalium genome from scratch for the purpose of 3) transplanting it into a recipient cell and creating essentially a new organism which Smith called M. laboratorium.
Continue reading "Transplant is Neat, But for Assembly, Nature Still Has Us Beat " »
From a quiet Sunday morning, the synthetic biology meeting in Zürich Switzerland quickly exploded to roughly 300 in attendance. I had a chance to grab Tom Knight of MIT who demurred only slightly when asked about his involvement with synthetic biology. You might call him a founding father of the field. “I gave it a name at least,” he told me as we waited on a long lunch line amongst the other synth biologists grumbling that the cafeteria would only accept Swiss francs.
He was happy to give me some help in trying to define the field.
Continue reading "Synthetic Biology … What is That Again?" »
Synthetic Biology 3.0 started today in Zürich, Switzerland and runs until Tuesday. This is the first European site for a meeting looking to unite biology and engineering under the umbrella of a breakout new field (1.0 and 2.0 were at MIT and UC Berkeley, respectively).
I tend to think of synthetic biologists as something akin to computer hackers, because they are looking to understand living cells in a more thorough sense by precisely designing manipulations to natural biological systems. They’re trying to write code for new biological functions and in a sense are hacking the cell. But that’s probably an imprecise definition.
UK firm unknowingly synthesizes smallpox fragment.
A recent investigation in a UK newspaper has highlighted the gulf between what is utterly routine within the research and biotech communities and what can shock the outside world, including legislators.
In a front-page article in The Guardian on 14 June, the newspaper's science correspondent describes how he arranged for a tiny fragment of the smallpox genome to be synthesized by a mail-order biological-supplies company and delivered to his home address.
Read more here
Conference discusses voluntary code of conduct.
Researchers in the field of synthetic biology are to issue a declaration of intent about professional behaviour and organization in order to ensure good practice and to address a range of concerns about their research. The scientists hope to ensure that controversy doesn't choke the field just as it begins to make progress. But critics are likely to be unimpressed — a coalition of organizations concerned about the technology released an open letter ahead of the meeting calling for the field to be externally regulated.
Read the story here.
Find blog entries from the synthetic biology conference here.
Alex Mallet, from Drew Endy's lab, gives his take on the whole meeting here. And a student at Davidson college has lots of entries summarising specific talks on cis-action. In the long run, I expect the easiest way to browse them will be on the May archive.
Four active bloggers at a small biology meeting: the shape of things to come? or an outlier produced by an over-representation of geekiness in this very specific field?
Posted on behalf of Oliver Morton
A big difference between this meeting and the one two years ago is the stress on medicine, which has been taking up quite a lot of Sunday. Wendell Lim, of UCSF, chairing the session, started it off with a serious, provocative vision. The medical implications of synthetic chemistry have been in making small molecule therapies; the medical implications of synthetic biology will lie in making "living therapies". Living therapies are creatures designed, with the help of synthetic genomes or parts of genomes, to do medicinal stuff. Examples from today: therapeutic bacteria that target tumours (bacteria seem attracted to tumours, which I didn't know before, and I'd be interested in finding out if anyone knows why), viruses for delivering genes, engineered immune system cells.
...is Rob Carlson, a friend who I met at the first of these meetings. Rob, like Drew Endy, used to work at Roger Brent's Molecular Sciences Institute, just down the road from here, and he's now at the University of Washington. He may well be the only person in this pretty eclectic audience whose interests roam from detecting single proteins in cells to building space elevators. More on Rob here.
Tim Gardner, of Boston University, gave an interesting talk on Saturday morning on the "network biology" approaches he's using in his lab. Interesting in two distinct ways.
An interesting addition to the various agendas surrounding this conference is an open letter from a variety of NGOs concerned about the implications of the technology and the limitations of scientific self governance, which can be read here. I hope some of those involved will be able to present their position in person during the debates on these issues that will take place on the third day of the conference -- I understand there are currently some invitations in the ether.
A fascinating first presentation from Steve Chu, who runs Lawrence Berkeley Lab, one of the sponsors of this event, on the challenge of finding technologies for clean energy production and the possibilities that various synthetic-biology technologies offer for meeting that challenge. There was lots of talk of artificial photosynthesis, and some wonderfully far out ideas, such as redesigning plants so that their carbon-dioxide intakes and water outputs are separated, rather than being combined in the magnificently subtle mechanisms of the stomata.
It's always fun to come to a conference where something is afoot -- where there's not just a bunch of presentations, but a genuine agenda. The first synthetic biology conference, at MIT two years ago, was such a conference -- an attempt to bring together a whole bunch of people working on a diverse bunch of technologies and scientific approaches that are made possible by cheap DNA synthesis, and to some extent to establish the pre-eminence among those approaches of the vision of synthetic biology then being championed at MIT. That vision is of a world where biological circuits can be designed from scratch, using
"biobricks", in an analgous way to electronic circuits, but with standardised sequences of DNA and the proteins they describe taking the place of resistors, transistors, diodes and the like. The conference was the basis of a feature I wrote on synthetic biology for Wired in my previous existence.
Oliver Morton reports back from the Second International Conference on Synthetic Biology (SB2.0) at the University of California, Berkeley, from 20-22 May.
Due to a technical glitch, some of these comments will be posted by Nicola Jones back in London, though they are being written by Oliver at the conference.
To post a comment about any of these posts, simply click on the headline.