For some reason, Synthia never quite equalled Dolly in the public’s consciousness. The world’s first cloned mammal had the advantage, of course, of being a rather photogenic ewe, without any visible traces of freakishness arising from the extraordinary circumstances of her creation.
Synthia, on the other hand, was a bacterium that caused mastitis in goats. And, as to her inception, she was an altogether different beast: the first organism to be made entirely from scratch in the laboratory without recourse to nature. Since DNA is just chemicals in a particular order, it was only a matter of time before scientists tried to string those chemicals together artificially. Still, it must have been a bit creepy when, in 2010, their attempt at a bacterial homebrew succeeded, resulting in a wriggling, replicating, goat-bothering Doppelgänger.
Today it is Synthia, not Dolly, that is seen as the future of biology. This bespoke, lab-created bacterium became an icon of synthetic biology, a spanking new discipline that makes useful stuff out of living parts. Synthetic biology, or synbio, is almost like cooking, using different flavours of DNA as the ingredients. Scientists talk of genetically customising existing organisms, or cooking up completely new ones, to churn out pandemic vaccines, eat pollutants and generate electricity.
Britain is aboard the synbio bandwagon: yesterday, at a conference at Imperial College in London, David Willetts, the science minister, gushed at how this knowledge will “heal us, feed us and fuel us”, and furnished £60 million for new research centres and technology transfer schemes to push the UK to the forefront of a new industrial revolution that could be worth £7.2 billion by 2016. British researchers will now join the global effort to create synthetic yeast, used in industries from beer to biofuels. The UK will contribute one of the 16 artificial chromosomes required to reconstruct the yeast genome.
Synbio may live up to Mr Willetts’s expectations, but it also has the capacity to worry us. After all, if science can assemble a yeast chromosome, why not a human one? Admittedly, this type of biological engineering isn’t straightforward; it will take until 2017 for the UK to whip up its single yeast chromosome. Difficulty, however, is no deterrent to ambition. Take Craig Venter, the Gordon Ramsay of the field. Venter, an American entrepreneur regarded as one of science’s great showmen, spent 15 years and at least $30 million creating Synthia. He even inserted a James Joyce quote in the organism’s genetic code: “To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to create life out of life.”
At yesterday’s conference, synthetic biologists were repeatedly asked whether synbio could make a human chromosome. “Yes,” eventually replied an exasperated Paul Freemont, the Imperial professor tasked with spearheading this country’s synbio efforts. “But why would you?”
That misses the point. The fact that you wouldn’t make a human chromosome hardly matters; it is the “could” that chills. Drew Endy, an American synthetic biologist, spoke of synbio’s potential to “reshape our relationship with nature”. Endy means it to be for the public good, in the same way that modern medicine is beneficial meddling with nature, but such sentiments risk being misunderstood. Add the fact that there is no single, clear code of ethics in the field – just piecemeal oversight by ethical review boards coupled with a virtual regulatory vacuum – and you can see why people like Venter are accused of playing God. It is not so much the playing God that dismays me but the inability of synthetic biologists to address legitimate public concerns. There may be no plans so far to create a synthetic human, but it wouldn’t hurt for scientists to show that they’ve thought about it and maybe even signed a pledge not to do it. When Dolly was created, everyone laughed off the idea that anyone would try to clone a person – until the maverick embryologist Severino Antinori saw the potential for a world first, and promptly went into hiding to achieve his as yet unrealised ambition.
Interestingly, amateurs are showing the way. DIYBio is a global collective of ordinary people who like experimenting in their spare time with chemicals they’ve ordered over the internet (really). In 2011, biohackers, as members are known, put together a code of conduct that emphasises transparency, modesty, honesty, responsibility and accountability. The commandments also include “respect for humans and all living systems”.
Indeed, these citizen scientists are also setting the ethical standard for community behaviour. GenSpace, which describes itself as a grassroots community biolab in Brooklyn, New York, has been showing residents how to catch dog owners who don’t clean up after their pets. By throwing tennis balls to local pooches and comparing the DNA in the saliva against that found in dog poo, frustrated residents have been able to identify miscreants. Forget yeast: if this is the synbio future, then count me in.