The term is more complex than the function! Synthetic biology implies control of biological circuits through a control mechanism. Wikipedia calls it “redesign of existing biological systems for useful purposes”. This combines biology and engineering and the differentiator between yeast based beer making might be the control systems that are built in the system by the molecular biologist.
The two different systems that can be differentiated are combination of systems to make an artificial “living” organism or manipulation of the system or cell to perform novel functions that it were not usually capable of…
The Gordon research conference to be held in 2019 has also subdivided it into : Biodesign engineering, xenobiology, synthetic genomics and others
There are multiple applications such as biological computation or designed proteins for synthetic biology but the most relevant one for Usin’Life is the one in which the biological system becomes a sensor and is capable of action. That action might be a diagnosis of a disease or condition or maybe even auto-correction of the altered condition. An extreme example might be using a biological system such as bacteria to respond to presence of high sugar in the human system and respond with the secretion of insulin. We have been trying to do this by stem cells but maybe it is possible to do this with other small biological systems. This is assuming that they are immunological neutral and do not trigger an immune reaction.
A variety of biological sensors are possible, and it will be interesting to track all the molecules that can be tracked by a sensor and reported using these technologies.
It is also amazing to see how much money has been raised in the synthetic biology area in 2018 (this image is from Synbiobeta – a synthetic biology network website:
There are several companies in this area and Synlogic, associated with Jim Collins, MIT is aiming to develop new therapies using some of the gene editing/engineering methods. Their unique sauce is that they are using microbes, specifically E.coli as their synthetic biology tool. The disease that they are targeting has been targeted by several other technologies and it will be important to track which diseases are ultimately targeted by them. You can also hear more about the synthetic biology discussion on a podcast at soundcloud: Jim Collins on soundcloud
