Synthetic biologists are often accused of “playing God,” of tampering with his Creation. Well, if you’re going to Create then you might as well do so with the help of some creative individuals?
That’s just what the biologists in the pages of the new book Synthetic Aesthetics, from MIT Press, aims to do. Its arrival is well-timed, with the first synthetic yeast chromosome having been created last month amid a flurry of scientific milestones in biotechnology.
Alun Anderson has reviewed the new book for New Scientist. Unlike the typically defensive posture found in biotech broadly, he writes, the spirit captured by this book is “freewheeling” and collaborative, with 20 authors ranging from the arts and sciences putting their minds together to generate original ideas.
Anderson notes that parts of the book “may irritate conventional scientists – some of the ideas were dreamed up while ‘performing a dance based on the myth of the Golem’, for example. But it certainly explains the key ideas of the field and leads you to many lateral conversations about what it may become.”
The book is itself an offshoot of a larger project, which you can check out at its official page. It describes itself as an “experimental, international research project between synthetic biology, art, design and social science” It has roots at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Stanford University, California. And the main project team is comprised of bioengineers Drew Endy (Stanford) and Alistair Elfick (Edinburgh), social scientists Jane Calvert (Edinburgh) and Pablo Schyfter (Edinburgh), and designer/artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg.
In the book Synthetic Aesthetics, Ginsberg provides a thought-provoking counterpoint to the engineering definition of “design”. Anderson explains in his review:
An engineer might think of designing a bridge to a particular specification; a synthetic biologist of designing a microorganism with a new commercial application, pumping out green gasoline for example; but a real designer, a fashion designer, for example, is doing something else.
As artist Daisy Ginsberg puts it, design “is about possibility”, the unimagined things that life could be. Synthetic biology, she writes, has been addressing “humanity’s needs” – limitless fuel, for example – rather than “our needs as individual, diverse and complex humans”. This is refreshing: worries about the separation between the top-down design of the future and those who must live with the designs are quite rare in science.
These words ring true, given the intensely “problem oriented” approach to most synthetic biology research. This approach extends to the coverage of this research in the media, where even a research achievement with sweeping potential like the synthetic yeast chromosome ends up broken down into pragmatic chunks. (Yeast could mass-produce medicines! Help process fuels!)
Alistair Elfick, one of the leads on the Synthetics Aesthetics project, has written a fascinating opinion piece at The Conversation to accompany the release of his book. In it, he puts forth the idea it’s time for synthetic biologists to stop thinking “like scientists,” lest they hamstring themselves. He writes:
Contemporary first-generation biotech has become very good at instructions like, “make lots of drug” or “make lots of enzyme”. But we are close to the point where we will be able to write whatever gene circuit we want. This will allow us to start with a blank sheet of paper.
As a writer, the blank sheet metaphor is especially poignant: to me, it represents unlimited potential. Eflick sees this potential too, but is worried that synthetic biology is squandering it.
Synthetic biology is often presented as being simply a technology that offers a way for industrial biotech to achieve sustainable drop-in replacements for existing products such as liquid fuels, plastics and so on.
This is modelled on 20th-century engineering paradigms of making, based on the processes of design, build, test and then manufacture. That’s been a very successful approach but my work has led me to believe that this may not be optimal for designing with life.
Potentially we might be missing something by apeing what has gone before […] There’s an acute concern that the door is starting to close on synthetic biology. There is a sense in which the optimism that tells us we will be surprised at some point seems to be fading. Will synthetic biology become a disruptive technology that promises to disrupt nothing?
Contrary to the old “playing God” concern, it seems like synthetic biology might need an infusion of boldness and imagination. To achieve is full potential, synthetic biology must learn to do more than merely create, it must Create.
Kenrick Vezina is Gene-ius Editor for the Genetic Literacy Project and a freelance science writer, educator, and naturalist based in the Greater Boston area.
Sources:
- “Synthetic biology gets reborn as an aesthetic dream,” Alun Anderson | New Scientist
- “If synthetic biologists think like scientists, they may miss their eureka moment,” Alistair Elfick | The Conversation
- Synthetic Aesthetics project
Additional Resources:
- “Breakthrough biology: First synthetic chromosome for yeast created, capping month of biotech innovations,” Kenrick Vezina | Genetic Literacy Project
- “Synthetic-biology firms shift focus: Switch to food and fragrances risks consumer rejection,” Erika Check Hayden | Nature
