Name: How Close Are We to Harnessing Synthetic Life?
Uploaded: 2020-03-25T02:57:50.000Z
Duration: 10 min 17 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

WHAT IF WE TOLD YOU THAT IN THE NOT-TOO-DISTANT FUTURE,

EVER SINCE SCIENTISTS UNLOCKED THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF BIOLOGY – DNA–

WE’VE MADE MASSIVE STRIDES IN UNDERSTANDING THE ‘BASE CODE’

AND OVER THE PAST FEW DECADES, WE’VE BECOME SO OBSESSED WITH THIS CODE

THAT SCIENTISTS ARE EXPLORING HOW TO EDIT GENOMES

BUT WHAT IF WE COULD LEARN TO HARNESS IT?

THAT’S THE PRINCIPLE BEHIND “SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY,” THE EMERGING STUDY

YOU MIGHT BE IMAGINING ARMIES OF FRANKENSTEIN CREATURES...

BUT WHAT WE MEAN FOR THE TIME BEING IS CREATING ANIMAL PRODUCTS,

ALL STARTING WITH SYNTHETIC DNA AND CELLS IN A LAB.

- I look at them as 3D printers, but the most powerful and successful 3D printers that exist

today, because they can print thousands and thousands of different materials all at once,

And it comes with a programming language: DNA.

- Pulling the principles of engineering design, and then the real fundamentals of molecular

biology together is really powerful, because it makes you think of biology as a design

medium, if you like,   using genetic material as the building blocks.

AND WHEN IT COMES TO SYNTHESIZING LIFE, THERE ARE TWO MAIN SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT.

One is actually trying to build artificial cells.

Actually starting from the bottom-up, and saying how do I build a living cell

Either using synthetic, chemical components, or using natural, biological components, how do I build

a cell, basically, from first principles, from scratch, bottom-up?

IN 2010, CRAIG VENTER’S RESEARCH TEAM MADE HISTORY WITH THIS APPROACH WHEN THEY CREATED

THE WORLD’S FIRST ‘SYNTHETIC ORGANISM,’ A BACTERIUM MADE ENTIRELY OF SYNTHETIC DNA.

- And most recently, out of the UK, Jason Chen and his team synthesized the E. coli genome.

- We now can specify, we want a genetic sequence, A, T, G, C, T, T, T, T, T, A, whatever.

We can send that information across the web to a company, and then they will put it into

their production pipeline, and then we will get sent back a chemical synthesized piece

- It's only going to get faster, and cheaper, and easier from here.

BUT IT’S STILL NOT AS FAST AND CHEAP AS EDITING AN EXISTING GENOME TO SYNTHESIZE NEW LIFE.

AND TO BE HONEST, STARTING FROM SCRATCH MIGHT NOT BE WORTH IT.

- A purist would say you have to make all the cellular components from atoms, okay.

You can make fully synthetic DNA chemically, but for most purposes it's not any more useful

- Now, the other way is actually taking existing cells, but re-engineering them,

to the extent of completely re-synthesizing the whole genome,

Putting it back into the cell, which means it's still a species, but it's got a human-designed

Building that code to perform a function, or to do a design, or to make something.

AND THAT’S JUST WHAT WE’RE  BEGINNING TO EXPLORE.

WITH GENETIC ENGINEERING TOOLS BECOMING MORE ACCESSIBLE THAN EVER BEFORE,

RESEARCHERS WANT TO USE SYNTHESIZED GENOMES

For simple things like detecting infections, or detecting environmental pollutants, we

can now engineer bacterial cells that will detect arsenic or fluorine or any of these

toxic chemicals, and will change color like a pH strip.

THESE BACTERIA COULD PROTECT US FROM CONSUMING TOXINS IN

CONTAMINATED DRINKING WATER, FOR EXAMPLE.

AND ANDREW AND HIS TEAM AT HUMANE GENOMICS ARE WORKING TO DEVELOP A LIBRARY OF SYNTHETIC

VIRUSES THAT COULD LEAD TO CUSTOMIZED CANCER THERAPIES.

You know it's going to dock with the particular cancer cell, and it's going to load a program

Now we get to write that program to make it even more specific for the cancer cell.

We're working with dogs, and dog cancers, to gain experience.

The cancer that we're working with first, it's a bone cancer.

So we put in little switches into the viral genome, so it's only active in a bone cancer

and you can measure its killing activity relative to normal cells.

Like the first attempt at anything, it's not going to cure cancer, but we demonstrated

that we could go from a file on a computer to a virus particle that could infect a cancer

cell, and we did it in a relatively short period of time for a relatively low cost.

OTHER RESEARCHERS HOPE TO TAKE ON THE FASHION INDUSTRY WITH LAB-MADE VERSIONS OF TRADITIONAL

BIOLOGICAL MATERIALS LIKE LEATHER, OR SILK.

BUT PERHAPS THE MOST AMBITIOUS PLAN INVOLVES “BIOREMEDIATION”––PREVENTING OR COUNTERBALANCING

ECOLOGICAL DAMAGE  USING MICROORGANISMS.

The concept is you have organisms that are engineered that would go out and either start

degrading plastics, start using plastic as an energy source, possibly start using toxic

components, cleaning up environments, using natural microbial systems.

OKAY, OKAY, WE KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING––WHAT ABOUT SYNTHETIC HUMANS?!

ENTER HUMAN-GENOME PROJECT-WRITE, OR JUST, GENOME-PROJECT WRITE.

A SEQUEL TO ‘THE HUMAN GENOME PROJECT,’ GP-WRITE IS BRINGING TOGETHER OVER ONE HUNDRED

INSTITUTIONS WORLDWIDE IN ONE COMMUNAL QUEST: TO SYNTHESIZE THE HUMAN GENOME.

You want a human cell which has new properties.

You want to make something that has properties like virus resistance or senescence, aging

You could do it with organic chemistry, or you could do it with biochemistry, or you

You could build human parts, meaning transplantable human parts, and from that you could build

But right now I think we're in a time where that's on hold, in part for lack of strong

Subtitles ListPlay Video

How Close Are We to Harnessing Synthetic Life?

manipulate

consume

fear

scratch