About 30 years ago, scientists, physicians, lawyers and journalists attended the historic Asilomar Conference in Pacific Grove, California, which was organized to address the safety issues raised by genetic engineering. The newfound ability to cut, paste and recombine genes brought exciting experimental possibilities but also the potential for misuse. Recombinant DNA technology offered hope for curing and treating genetic disorders, creating useful industrial products, and making hearty crop strains, but it also engendered fears of Frankenstein-like organisms that could cause plagues or escape into the environment to disrupt ecological webs and derail evolution.
Three decades later, synthetic biologists, a new breed of scientists who design and construct novel biological systems using engineering principles, are wrestling with some of the same issues raised at Asilomar.
In the past 5 years, making DNA has gotten easier, faster and cheaper. Although the ability to synthesize short stretches of DNA (oligonucleotides) has been around for nearly 25 years, it was not until recently that scientists developed quick ways to stitch together these “oligos” into longer stretches of DNA. Meanwhile, DNA-synthesis companies have cropped up all around the world, providing genes and entire genomes made-to-order for virtually anyone who will buy them.
“These [DNA synthesis] companies “can in ten days can make a sequence of 3000 bases and maybe in several weeks can make a sequence that’s 20,000 bases,” says Ron Weiss, an electrical engineer at Princeton University whose lab group designs and embeds synthetic gene networks in cells. “The techniques are much, much faster and more efficient and less costly,” Weiss says.
While cheap and fast-made DNA accelerates research in many areas, such as developing biofuels or creating malaria medicine, it also opens the door to intentional and accidental misuse. Some fear that improved methods of DNA synthesis could help terrorists design artificial bacteria and viruses against which humans have no immunity; after all, smallpox, the 1918 influenza virus, and other pathogenic genomes are published on the Internet for all to see. Others worry that microorganisms could escape from the lab and wreak havoc on ecosystems.
Synthetic biologists are aware of such threats and have begun to address them early on. This past summer, leading academics from MIT and Harvard, together with industry executives and security experts, published a commentary in Nature Biotechnology proposing an oversight framework for the DNA-synthesis industry. And a few days ago, a report was released by the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) offering policy options to address the potentially dangerous applications of this new technology. The report, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, proposed options that included but are not limited to the following: requiring DNA-synthesis companies use special software to screen orders for potentially dangerous gene sequences and keep records about customers and their orders; requiring owners of DNA-synthesis machines (such as those used in university laboratories) to register and obtain licenses to use their machines; and requiring universities to incorporate synthetic biology safety education into their curricula, use an institutional biosafety committee to review risky experiments, and allow oversight from a national advisory group.
So far these are just recommendations, but they are a good start. Scientists, policy-makers, and bioethicists need to continue thinking about these issues as the science of synthetic biology races onward.
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