The speed at which Syn­thetic Biol­ogy is evolv­ing (pun intended) is mind-blowing, espe­cially to some­one who has just stum­bled upon the sci­ence (inspired by Tuur Van Balen’s pre­sen­ta­tion at Inter­est­ing 2009). In his words, it “will make most of us won­der why we ever got so excited about the Inter­net”.

You can tell a tech­nol­ogy has excit­ing poten­tial when ridicu­lous neol­o­gisms spread as quickly as the tech­nol­ogy itself. In the 1990s the Inter­net had peo­ple “surf­ing” “cyber­space”; now syn­thetic biol­ogy has biop­unks and wet­ware hack­ers.

Although much of the cur­rent lit­er­a­ture is beyond my rudi­men­tary under­stand­ing, the idea of Bio­Bricks seems incred­i­ble. I would describe it as a “genetic pro­gram­ming lan­guage”, but that doesn’t do it jus­tice. To para­phrase the descrip­tion on the website:

Using Bio­Brick™ … parts, [you] can … pro­gram liv­ing organ­isms in the same way a com­puter sci­en­tist can pro­gram a com­puter. The DNA sequence infor­ma­tion and other char­ac­ter­is­tics of Bio­Brick™ stan­dard bio­log­i­cal parts are made avail­able to the pub­lic free of charge cur­rently via MIT’s Reg­istry of Stan­dard Bio­log­i­cal Parts.

In other words, there’s a grow­ing free data­base of ‘bio­log­i­cal parts’ (tastes, smells, reac­tions, pro­teins) that you can piece together to ‘re-program’ exist­ing bio­log­i­cal sys­tems (typ­i­cally bac­te­ria); for exam­ple, here’s a part for a Banana odour gen­er­a­tor:

tcc­c­tatcagt­gata­ga­gattga­catc­c­c­tatcagt­gata­ga­gat­act­gag­cac­tac­ta­ga­gat­taaa­gag­ga­gaaat­ac­ta­gat­gaat­gaaatc­gatga
gaaaaatcaggc­c­c­c­cgt­g­caa­caa­gaat­gc­ct­gaaa­ga­gat­gattca­gaatgggcat­gctcg­gcg­tatgggatct­gttgaa­gatct­g­tat­gttgctctc
aaca­ga­caaaact­tatatc­gaaacttct­g­ca­catatg­ga­gaattgagt­gat­tact­g­tac­tagggatcagct­ca­cattagctttgagggaaatct­gc­ctga
aaaatc­caactcttt­ta­catattgttc­tac­caa­caa­gatg­gc­caaat­cat­gaaaat­tat­tatcgcagttc­c­gaat­ac­tattcacg­gc­ca­catccagt­gca
tgat­tatatttcagtat­ta­caa­gaattgaaact­gagtg­gt­gtg­gttct­caat­gaa­caac­ct­gag­tacagt­gcagtaat­gaag­caaatatta­gaa­gagttc
aaaaatag­taagggttc­c­tat­act­g­caaaaatttt­taaact­tac­tac­cactttgac­tattc­ct­tactttg­gac­caacaggac­c­gagttg­gcg­gc­taattt
gtcttcca­gaa­gag­ca­caca­gaaaagtg­gaaaaaatt­tatctttg­tatc­taat­cattg­cat­gtct­gatg­gtcg­gtcttc­gatc­cacttttttcat­gattt
aaga­gac­gaat­taaataatat­taaaactc­cac­caaaaaaatta­gat­ta­cattttcaag­tac­gag­gag­gat­tac­caat­tattgag­gaaacttcca­gaaccg
atc­gaaaag­gt­gata­gactt­ta­gac­cac­cg­tacttgtt­tattc­c­gaagt­cacttctttcgggtttcatc­ta­caat­catttga­gattttcttcaaaag­gtg
tct­g­tat­ga­gaatg­gat­gat­gtg­gaaaaaac­c­gat­gat­gttgt­cac­c­ga­gat­cat­caatatttcac­caaca­gaatttcaagc­gat­taaag­caaatat­taa
atcaaatatc­caag­gtaagt­g­tac­tat­cactc­cgtttt­ta­cat­gtttgttg­gtttg­tatctcttcataaatggggtaaatttttcaaac­cattgaacttc
gaatg­gct­tacg­gatatttt­tatc­c­c­cgca­gattgc­cgct­ca­caac­tacca­gat­gat­gat­gaaat­ga­gaca­gat­g­taca­gatatg­gcgc­taacgttg­gat
ttattgacttcac­c­c­c­ctg­gataagc­gaatct­ga­cat­gaat­gataa­caaa­gaaaatttttg­gc­cact­tattgag­cac­tac­cat­gaag­taatttcg­gaagc
tttaa­gaaataaaaag­catctc­catg­gct­tagggttcaatat­a­caag­gcttcgttcaaaaatat­gt­gaa­cattga­caag­gtaat­gt­gc­gatcgt­gc­catc
gggaaaa­gacgcg­gag­gta­cattgt­taag­caat­g­tag­gtct­gtt­taatcagt­ta­gag­gagc­c­c­gat­gc­caaatattc­tatat­gc­gatttg­gcatttg­gcc
aatttcaag­gatc­ctg­gcac­caag­cattttc­cttgggt­gtttgttc­gac­taat­g­taaaggggat­gaatattgttgttgcttcaa­caaa­gaat­gttgttgg
tagt­caa­gaatctctc­gaa­gagctttgctc­catt­ta­caaagctctc­cttt­tag­gc­c­ct­taataat­ac­ta­gagccaggcat­caaataaaac­gaaag­gctca
gtc­gaaa­gactgggc­ctttcgttt­tatct­gttgtttgtcg­gt­gaacgctctc­tac­ta­gagt­ca­cactg­gct­cac­cttcgggtgggc­ctttct­gcgtt­tat
a

At the moment, this isn’t quite avail­able to the pub­lic; “re-programming” the bac­te­ria cur­rently requires a range of equip­ment, from the sim­ple Petri dish to a cen­trifuge and incubator.

dna_writer

Even still, I’m excited by the prospect that this tech­nol­ogy could become acces­si­ble to non-academics in the next ten years. In my crazed sci-fi mind, I pic­ture an ‘off the shelf’ bacteria-pre-loaded ‘petri dish’ that you can ‘load into’ a com­po­nent in your home PC; the CD-like device can then act as a cen­trifuge and any­thing else that’s required of it (the words of an igno­rant dreamer!).

You can read more about Bio­Bricks on Wikipedia, and numer­ous O’Reilly Radar posts (here, here, here and here) – all highly rec­om­mended reading.

petri-disc