What is synthetic biology and why should you care?

Caryn Lipson

April 16, 2024

Understanding synthetic biology (synbio)

What it is

We've been hearing a lot about synthetic biology in terms of synthetic foods, yet synbio is more than just an attempt to recreate food, which Frontline News has written about in relationship to synthetic “milk.” Synbio genetic engineers are also interested in reproducing biological organisms and creating new biological products not found in nature. Following are a few definitions of synbio to show what it encompasses:

Wikipedia - making new biological products or redesigning existing ones:

Synthetic biology is a multidisciplinary field of science that focuses on living systems and organisms, and it applies engineering principles to develop new biological parts, devices, and systems or to redesign existing systems found in nature. -

New Hope Network - using fermentation as mini-factories to recreate natural products:

Ultimately, synbio is an attempt to re-create something that occurs in nature by using microorganisms to act as mini-factories,” explains Dana Perls, food and technology program manager at Friends of the Earth.

Genome.gov - redesigning organisms for new purposes and recreating substances in nature through artificial means:

Synthetic biology is a field of science that involves redesigning organisms for useful purposes by engineering them to have new abilities. Synthetic biology researchers and companies around the world are harnessing the power of nature to solve problems in medicine, manufacturing and agriculture.

Redesigning organisms so that they produce a substance, such as a medicine or fuel, or gain a new ability, such as sensing something in the environment, are common goals of synthetic biology projects.

Jim Thomas, in an interview with Eco Farming Daily - treating biology as a computer program (Jim Thomas is a technology historian and long-time critic of the biotech industry):

The core assumptions of synthetic biology are that life is a sort of computer program, that DNA is like a code and that a cell or living organism is like a computer or a machine. As long as you can “reprogram” the DNA — the instructions — then you can engineer the machine to do whatever you want it to do.

Products created using synthetic biology

New Hope Network author Melaina Juntti said that many synbio products are already in many foods and are finding their way into dietary supplement supply chains, also. She referred to the Non-GMO Project's director of marketing and communications, Hans Eisenbeis, who said that some synbio products have already been commercialized or are in development such as “vanillin and other flavorings, several colorants, CBD, collagen, plant-based proteins, dairy proteins, vitamins, omegas, probiotics and dairy milk proteins.”

In addition to Eisenbeis's list, Health Research Institute–HRI Labs chairman and chief scientist, John Fagan, Ph.D., added “astaxanthin, resveratrol, and squalene to the growing list.”

Nature provides this list of synbio generated products:

Hemme used to make the “blood” for the Impossible Burger: “The yeast Pichia pastoris was engineered to produce soy leghemoglobin, which improves meaty flavors and aromas when added to a plant-based burger.”
Other synbio products created by fermenting yeast include Vitamin E, stevia, and milk whey. Plant pathways to pharmaceuticals include taxadiene (Taxol precursor), steroids, THC, and opiates. “An early landmark achievement to make the anti-malarial Artimisin was taken into production by Sanofi, but was discontinued because the cost was higher than sourcing it from the plant.”
Januvia (sitgaliptin) is a diabetes medication manufactured by Merck. “It is the 95th most-prescribed drug with ~107 prescriptions and $1.35 billion in annual sales.”
Hyaline transparent and flexible film for electronics.
ProveN fertilizer being applied to corn. “Pivot Bio has created the first biological fertilizer for corn based on a γ-proteobacterium (KV137) that associates with corn roots and has the necessary genes to fix nitrogen. However, the genes are off when most needed, so synthetic biology was used to turn the genes on, which guided the remodeling of the KV137 genome.”
Kymriah, a treatment for B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia by Novartis, is produced by genetically modifying a patient’s T cells and is deemed an “effective living therapy.” Using engineered living cells for therapeutic purposes has been considered to be the “3rd pillar of medicine.” Kymriah (Tisagenlecleucel) is the first of its type to receive FDA approval.
Calyno high-oleic oil from soy “is the first product from a genome-edited plant to enter the United States food supply.” Calyno manufacturer Calyxt edited the soy genome to reduce the amount of unstable linoleic acid to create an oil containing 80% oleic acid rather than 20% in unmodified oil. To do this, Calyxt inactivated two fatty acid desaturase genes that reduce the production of the unstable linoleic acid.

Nature author Chris Voigt provides a futuristic look at what else might be done with synbio such as bee-copters to transport people and trees that grow into houses. Scientists are looking to create biology-derived components. Voigt says that “[t]he next decade will see more products that derive their superior performance and affordability from engineered biology.”

Genome.gov provides some examples of what scientists are producing with synthetic biology,:

Microorganisms harnessed for bioremediation to clean pollutants from our water, soil and air.
Rice modified to produce beta-carotene, a nutrient usually associated with carrots, that prevents vitamin A deficiency. Vitamin A deficiency causes blindness in 250,000 - 500,000 children every year and greatly increases a child's risk of death from infectious diseases.
Yeast engineered to produce rose oil as an eco-friendly and sustainable substitute for real roses that perfumers use to make luxury scents.

What could go wrong?

According to Thomas, original GMOs which involved moving a single gene from one organism to another consistently produced unexpected results. Synthetic biology which is more complex will certainly lead to a greater degree of unexpected results. One such scenario, he said, would involve an organism engineered to break down cellulose that gets out into the environment:

Let’s say you have an organism engineered to break down cellulose. If it got out into the environment, there is plenty of cellulose in our houses, clothes and fields to survive on. And we don’t know how it would change with evolution or whether it would produce toxins. Those are some of the worrying scenarios.

Thomas wasn't pulling an example out of the air, either. He recounted a previous experience with a GMO bacteria that was designed to break down cellulose, but astute researchers discovered that it would yield unwanted results and were able to halt its release before it could do damage:

Klebsiella planticola was a bacterium genetically engineered to break down cellulose. Fortunately, a couple of researchers looking at its impacts in the soil found that it would produce an alcohol that would kill plant roots and they were able to halt the release before it happened

Living systems have a will to live.

In fact, a lot of the initial work in synthetic biology sought to engineer organisms to break down cellulose into alcohol for ethanol production. If instead you break down cellulose and turn it into vanilla and that gets into the soil, we don’t know if that’s a problem. And that’s assuming that it’s going to do the thing it’s expected to do. These are living systems that evolve and have a will to live.

New Hope further quoted Dana Perls saying that we don't understand nature well enough to know that what we are doing is totally safe.

The problem is we don’t understand enough about how nature works to do it in a way that we can be sure is safe for human health and the environment and sustainable for small farmers.

Despite biotech and agribusiness’s insistence that synbio is safe and eco-friendly, nobody knows for sure whether that’s true. Unlike first-generation GMOs—primarily plants modified with DNA from another species—this new form of gene editing is totally unregulated. USDA and FDA limit their oversight of genetically engineered products to those containing foreign DNA, which synbio ingredients typically do not have. Thus, the DARK Act of 2018, which mandates labeling of “bioengineered” foods, is of little use.

Claims of “natural” are not accurate.

New biotech companies are trying to pull the wool over FDA and USDA by claiming to be making ‘nature-identical’ products. But these products are not natural and are far from identical—they are genetically engineered.

Consumers and food manufacturers in the dark

Consumers, New Hope's Junti wrote, are mostly unaware of synbio, even those who want GMOs labeled. And, it's not just the consumers who don't know what they're buying, she says, but the “[m]any food and dietary supplement manufacturers are also unaware of the true identity of ingredients they’re purchasing.”

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