Imagine grilling a lab-grown steak on your patio — but the bricks are made from bacteria . Guests at your cookout are wearing a mushroom belt, algal flip flops, or a protein coat. Meanwhile, someone rolls up in new dandelion tires for their car. All of this could be possible with the technology revolution that is quickly sprouting up.
The United States has led bioscience research for years, but it has recently hit an inflection point. Gene-sequencing can now be done cost efficiently, while advances in gene-editing, advanced computing, bioinformatics, automation, and artificial intelligence are converging to take what we can do with biology to a new, astounding level. Our ability to build molecules, materials, and structures biologically is set to unleash breakthrough innovations that will replace objects and products we use today.
“As the bioeconomy expands from therapeutics to commodity products, it is critical that we significantly boost investment in R&D for platform technologies, such as synthetic biology and data-driven scale-up process development, to further shorten the lab-to-market time,” said Joe Elabd, the Vice Chancellor for Research at the Texas A&M University system.
