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Do I Understand What I Can Create?

Biosafety Issues in Synthetic Biology

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Synthetic Biology

Abstract

Synthetic biology offers many new opportunities for the future. The increasing complexities in engineering biological systems, however, also puts a burden on our abilities to judge the risks involved. Synthetic biologists frequently cite genius physicist Richard Feynman “What I cannot create I do not understand”. This leitmotiv, however, does not necessarily imply that “What I can create, I do understand”, since the ability to create is essential but not sufficient to full understanding. The difference between having enough knowledge to create a new bio-system and having enough knowledge to fully grasp all possible interactions and its complete set of behavioural characteristics, is exactly what makes the difference for a sustainable and safe development. This knowledge gap can be closed by applying adequate and up-to-date biosafety risk assessment tools, which -in their majority – have yet to be developed for the major subfields of synthetic biology (DNA-based biological circuits, minimal genomes, protocells and unnatural biochemical systems). Avoiding risk is one part, the other one should be to make biotechnology even safer. This aim could be achieved by introducing concepts from systems engineering, especially from safety engineering, to syntheic biology. Some of these concepts are presented and discussed here, such as Event Tree and Fault Tree Analysis. Finally the impact of the de-skilling agenda in synthetic biology – allowing more and more people to engineer biology – needs to be monitored, to avoid amateur biologists causing harm to themselves, their neighborhood and the environment.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Results of focus groups in Austria carried out in September 2008, personal communication by Nicole Kronberger.

  2. 2.

    See: http://syntheticbiology.org/Who_we_are.html accessed at November 6, 2008

  3. 3.

    See: NSABB (2007) Roundtable on Synthetic Biology. October 11, 2007. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. http://www.biosecurityboard.gov/Annotated%20Agenda%20Website.pdf

  4. 4.

    See: http://www.synbiosafe.eu

  5. 5.

    See: http://partsregistry.org/Main_Page

  6. 6.

    Genetic reliability: The number of culture doublings before a mutant device represents at least 50% of the population.

  7. 7.

    Performance reliability, The number of culture doublings before 50% of the population is unable to correctly respond to an input.

  8. 8.

    The LNA is a nucleic acid analogue containing one or more LNA nucleotide monomers with a bicyclic furanose unit locked in an RNA mimicking sugar conformation.

  9. 9.

    Uptake of genes from other organisms has led to the evolution of another kind of “minimal organism”, Desulforudis audaxviator that forms a single-species ecosystem almost 3 km below the surface of the earth (Chivian et al. 2008).

  10. 10.

    It has to be noted that many biologists and biotechnologists doubt that one day living organisms will be as easily assembled from bio-parts as electronics circuits from electronic parts. Many iGEM projects fail, and it is still not easy to construct new biological networks.

  11. 11.

    See: DIY bio, a group based in Boston, MA, USA, trying to establish a biohacker community.

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Acknowledgments

The work was supported by a grant from the European Commission’s 6th framework programme under the category “New and Emerging Science and Technology” for the project “SYNBIOSAFE: Safety and Ethical Aspects of Synthetic Biology”, contract 043205. The author declares that he has no conflict of interest.

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  1. Organisation for International Dialogue and Conflict Management (IDC), Biosafety Working Group, Vienna, Austria

    Markus Schmidt

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  1. Markus Schmidt
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Correspondence to Markus Schmidt .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. und Konfliktmanagement (IDC), Organisation für Internationalen Dialog, Abt-Karl Gasse 19/21, Wien, 1180, Austria

    Markus Schmidt

  2. Dept. European Studies &, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath, BA27AY, United Kingdom

    Alexander Kelle

  3. Inst. Biomedizinische Ethik, Universität Zürich, Zollikerstr. 115, Zürich, 8008, Switzerland

    Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra

  4. De Vriesstraat 13, Delft, 2613 CA, Netherlands

    Huib Vriend

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Schmidt, M. (2009). Do I Understand What I Can Create?. In: Schmidt, M., Kelle, A., Ganguli-Mitra, A., Vriend, H. (eds) Synthetic Biology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2678-1_6

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