The promises and the dangers of synthetic biology

FOR THE four billion years ago, the only way for life on Earth to produce a sequence of DNA– a gene – was to copy a sequence that he already had on hand. Sometimes the gene would be damaged or scrambled, the copy imperfect or repeatedly undertaken. From this raw material are born the glories of natural selection. But behind all this, gene generated gene.

This is no longer true. Now, genes can be written from scratch and edited many times, like text in a word processor. The resulting engineering capacity of living beings represents a fundamental change in the way humans interact with the life of the planet. It makes all kinds of things difficult or impossible to manufacture: pharmaceuticals, fuels, fabrics, foods and perfumes can all be built molecule by molecule. What cells do and what they can become is also unmanageable. The immune cells can be told to follow the doctor's orders; stem cells better motivated to transform into new tissues; Fertilized eggs programmed to become very different creatures from their parents.

The first stages of this "synthetic biology" are already modifying many industrial processes, transforming medicine and beginning to affect the world of consumption (see Technology Quarterly). Progress can be slow, but with the help of new tools and a large amount of machine learning, organic manufacturing could eventually lead to truly corneal technologies. Buildings can be made from synthetic wood or coral. Mammoths made from artificial elephant cells can still cross Siberia.

The magnitude of the potential changes seems hard to imagine. But let's go back through the history and relationships of humanity with the living world have gone through three great transformations: the exploitation of fossil fuels, the globalization of the world's ecosystems after the European conquest of the Americas and the domestication of crops and animals at the dawn of agriculture. All have brought prosperity and progress, but with damaging side effects. Synthetic biology promises a similar transformation. To exploit the promise and minimize the danger, it is useful to learn from the past.

The new biology calls everything into doubt

Start with the most recent of these previous changes. Fossil fuels have enabled humans to drive a remarkable economic expansion into the present using the biological productivity of the past, stored in coal and oil. But many wild areas have been lost and carbon atoms, which last saw the atmosphere hundreds of millions of years ago, have boosted the planet's greenhouse effect to a degree that could reveal catastrophic. Here, synthetic biology can do good. It is already used to replace certain products based on petrochemicals; over time, it could also replace some fuels. This week, Burger King has introduced in some of its restaurants a meatless Whopper that pulls its flesh of vegetable protein from engineering; such innovations could greatly facilitate the transition to cleaner regimes. They could also be used to do more with less. Plants and their soil microbes could produce their own fertilizers and pesticides, and ruminants less greenhouse gases – although to ensure that synthetic biology provides such commendable environmental goals, it will have to be taken into account. for public policies and market signals.

The second example of biological change sweeping the world is the Colombian exchange, in which the newly created global trade network in the sixteenth century mingled the creatures of the New World and the Old. Horses, cattle, and cotton were introduced into the Americas; corn, potatoes, pepper and tobacco to Europe, Africa and Asia. The ecosystems in which humans live have become globalized as never before, providing more productive agriculture and a richer diet for many. But there were also disastrous consequences. Measles, smallpox and other pathogens have crossed the New World like a forest fire, killing tens of millions of people. Europeans have armed this catastrophe by conquering land exhausted and disorganized by the disease.

Synthetic biology could create such weapons by design: pathogens intended to weaken, neutralize or kill, and perhaps also to be limited to certain types of targets. There is something to worry about here, but not for an immediate alarm. For such militarization, like the rest of advanced synthetic biology, would require highly skilled teams with significant resources. And armies already have many ways to flatten cities and kill many people. In terms of mass destruction, a disease is a poor substitute for a nuclear weapon. In addition, the current community of synthetic biology meets the ideals of openness and public service better than many older fields. Maintained and nourished, this crop should serve as a powerful immune system against unwanted elements.

The first biological transformation – domestication – produced what was up to now the greatest change in the way humans lived. By chance, then deliberately, humans raised cereals to be more generous, cattle to be more docile, dogs more obedient and cats easier to accompany (this last success is at best partial). This has allowed new densities of installation and new forms of social organization: the market, the city, the state. Humans have domesticated themselves as well as their crops and animals, creating a space for the strenuous work of subsistence farming and oppressive political hierarchies.

Synthetic biology will have a similar cascading effect, transforming the relationships of humans with each other and possibly their own biological nature. The ability to reprogram the embryo is, rightly, the site of most of today's ethical concerns. In the future, they could expand further; what should be done of people with gorilla strength in the upper body or minds insensitive to grief? It's hard to say how humans can choose to change themselves biologically. that some choices will be controversial is not.

Which explains why this transformation differs from the previous three. Their meaning has only been discovered retrospectively. This time, there will be foresight. It will not be perfect: there will certainly be unexpected effects. But synthetic biology will be guided by the pursuit of goals, anticipated and desired. This will challenge the human capacity for wisdom and foresight. That could defeat him. But carefully maintained, this could also help to expand it.