Scientific and economic solutions to curtail these emissions have been proposed for decades, with some success along the way. But 21st century problems necessitate modern solutions, and businesses – the major contributors to carbon emissions – are not typically willing to promote sustainability at the cost of profits.
Fortunately, synthetic biology – an engineering approach to biology that creates and uses tools to design and build functions in cells – offers a means to implement sustainable manufacturing processes that can reduce costs while producing materials, fuels, and chemicals that are superior to existing products on the market.
The engineering and adaptability of genetically-modified organisms holds the solution.
Synthetic biology: The next industrial revolution
In 2000, two research letters appeared back-to-back in the journal Nature. Confined to the final pages of the January issue, they heralded a paradigm shift in biology.
In these letters, scientists reported the first successful genetic circuits operating in living cells. Modeled on electrical circuits, the scientists constructed two different types of biological circuits in living organisms using entirely synthetic DNA, programming the cell to perform predefined behaviors not found in nature.
A skilled group of physicists, bioengineers, and molecular biologists soon flocked to the discipline, eager to program cells that could perform untapped functions. In the years that followed, engineered cells were processing and recording information, executing complex behaviors (like counting and forming patterns) and converting cheap starting materials into valuable compounds and medicines.
In April 2019, the field of synthetic biology graced the cover of The Economist, broadly conveying both its promise and perils. While synthetic biology has come a long way in the last two decades, its greatest test, industrial scale manufacturing for a circular and sustainable economy, is only just beginning.
Feeding organisms for a profit
Microbes have been exploited by humans for thousands of years. By supplying bacteria and yeast with simple sugars, they have long produced tasty foods like bread, wine, beer, and cheese.
But synthetic biologists are now rerouting the metabolic pathways of these very same organisms so that they consume carbon waste, like carbon dioxide and methane, rather than sugar. By changing their food supply, the cells can still produce a repertoire of products, albeit with less waste and expense.
Some industrial cities, mainly in Asia, are already taking carbon dioxide and methane waste from factories and using it as a feedstock to manufacture a milieu of commercial products. Bioplastics, including pesky PET, are being degraded by engineered organisms. Microbes that produce nitrogen are even being used as a synthetic fertilizer to reduce our dependence on ammonia, the production of which is energy intensive and wasteful.
As our ability to reliably and rapidly engineer organisms improves, living cells will increasingly be used to produce goods at industrial scales. Synthetic biology solutions can be implemented in many sectors of cities and municipalities to address current challenges in sustainable fuel production, waste and carbon emissions recycling, improvement of crop yields, and for the production of high-nutrient foods.
These applications will have broad benefits regardless of where human communities arise, and the same technologies that will help sustain us on earth will also support our journey to inhabit the stars.
Aboard the International Space Station, orbiting earth at nearly five miles per second, engineered seeds are growing into plants that could soon manufacture specific proteins, including antiviral antibodies, on-demand. NASA is also exploring synthetic biology to convert carbon dioxide to valuable organic materials on Mars and in deep space, since crude oil and other carbon sources will not be readily available. Other scientists are actively exploring ways to leverage synthetic organisms to produce food in space or to help terraform Mars’ atmosphere.
The realization of these seemingly far-flung dreams is brought closer by the businesses engaged in synthetic biology R&D. More companies join the biological revolution every day, eager to improve their products while reducing cost and waste.
Industrial synthetic biology is already making a dent in the circular economy
If cells can be engineered to convert carbon to fuels and medicine, so too can they be modified to convert waste products – such as those billions of tons produced annually – to do the same. But plausibility rarely translates to lasting results. Take the city of Chicago as an example.
In 2015, residents and activities in Chicago generated 32 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. Reducing these exorbitant emissions is no small feat, and it is unlikely that a single remedy will provide a full solution. But synthetic biology can, and already is, making cities like Chicago more sustainable by converting carbon emissions to valuable materials.
LanzaTech is an industrial-level synthetic biology company that harnesses carbon waste and converts it to transportation fuel using engineered organisms. They opened their first industrial facility outside of Beijing last year, which collects emissions from a steel factory and generates more than 16 million gallons of ethanol per year. Soon, the company will expand to four additional facilities, reducing emissions comparable to removing hundreds of thousands of cars from the road each year.
The chemical giant DuPont is also actively shifting their R&D towards synthetic biology solutions that can mitigate pesky chemical manufacturing issues through their Industrial Biosciences division. They are already operating large, active research programs to reduce food waste, produce fuels renewably and manufacture biomaterials with market-driven solutions using genetically-engineered organisms. Earlier this year, DuPont began construction on a new European headquarters for their Industrial Biosciences division in the Netherlands, with the aim of expanding their global impact.
Other companies are exploring synthetic biology as a means to reduce carbon emissions in agriculture, a sector that makes up nearly 10% of US greenhouse gas emissions. The results are incredibly promising.
Pivot Bio, based out of Berkeley, California, announced their successful development of a nitrogen-producing microorganism that can replace synthetic fertilizers. The production of ammonia is energy-intensive and wasteful, contributing many millions of tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every year. Pivot Bio’s engineered strain will reduce the agricultural industry’s reliance on synthetic fertilizers, without impacting crop yield. In the latest growth trial, the microbe outperformed synthetic fertilizer by 7.7 bushels per acre.
The “meatless meat” industry has also been expanding in recent years, leveraging the capabilities of engineered organisms to recreate the taste of real meat without the cow. Impossible Foods, creators of the famous Impossible Burger, use engineered yeast to produce heme, the major protein found in blood, to give plant-based burgers the taste of red meat.
Other companies, like Spiber and Checkerspot, have their sights locked on producing high-performance materials from rudimentary carbon sources.
Spiber is a Japanese company that produces synthetic spider silks, foams and films by designing proteins that assemble into pre-defined patterns and structures at the molecular level. Farming silk from spiders is excruciatingly time consuming. Now, the company can modify natural silk fibers and design new material functions in a matter of days with synthetic biology. While normal silk contracts in water, for example, Spiber has created altered versions that are hydrophobic, expanding their utility for outdoor apparel. They previously partnered with The North Face to produce high-performance ski jackets made from bioengineered materials.
Pushing beyond textiles, Checkerspot, based out of Berkeley, California, engineers microalgae, a type of photosynthetic organism found in water, to produce oils that are difficult to manufacture using chemistry alone. These include oil and water-repellant coatings and even a palm oil replacement. Large areas of rainforest are cleared to produce palm oil currently, destroying ecosystems and exacerbating carbon emissions.
In all of these examples, nature is the breadboard and scientists are only limited by their imagination. A nearly infinite array of chemicals and materials can be produced from living organisms, with CO2 and other carbon sources, like methane, as the fodder.
But there are roadblocks ahead.
Future outlooks for a bio-based solution
Imagination is not implementation. Despite the remarkable progress of synthetic biology over the last two decades, widespread public acceptance remains elusive. Gene editing continuously dominates headlines; a trend that is not always positive. Opposition to genetically-modified (GM) crops remains especially fierce. Of those Americans that have “heard a lot” about GM foods, nearly half see them as health risks, despite the widespread adoption of GM foods in agriculture over the last several decades.
While synthetic biology has had less media coverage than GM food specifically, accurate and timely dissemination of information will prove crucial in swaying public acceptance, particularly as engineered organisms manufacture medicines and other consumables in greater volumes. Engineered E. coli have been used to produce human insulin since 1978 amid little public backlash, but there is no certainty that future medicines, clothing lines, and fuels produced using synthetic biology will be so readily accepted.
While a circular economy has long been imagined, it has only recently become fully implementable. For this next stage of the fight, synthetic biology – along with economic incentives and political sway – will usher cities and economies, on earth and in space, toward their inexorable destinies.
John Cumbers is the founder and CEO of SynBioBeta, the leading community of innovators, investors, engineers, and thinkers who share a passion for using synthetic biology to build a better, more sustainable universe. Follow him on Twitter @johncumbers
Nicholas McCarty is a bioengineering PhD student at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He previously completed his Masters in Systems and Synthetic Biology at Imperial College London as a Fulbright Scholar
A version of this article was originally published on Meeting of the Minds’ website as “Synthetic Biology for Sustainable Cities” and has been republished here with permission.
