According to the Bradenton Herald, the governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, paid a visit to Osprey Biotechnics in Sarasota, FL, last Thursday to speak with the company’s executive team about their petroleum-degrading bacteria, Munox, and possibilities of referring the product to President Obama as a way to clean up the oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.  This was after, and ostensibly because, San Francisco Chronicle blogger Zennie62 (Zenophon Abraham) researched the company and passed the information onto Crist.  As Abraham comments, there are not any known complications with the product or any known side effects.  Of course, there is not very much information in general available on the product to the public.

This marks an interesting convergence of the new found government and media interest in synthetic biology and increasingly urgent calls for innovative technological responses to Deepwater Horizon.  In “Understanding the Risks and Rewards of Synthetic Biology,” Nancy Gibbs discusses this desire to put large expectations onto the emerging scientific field to solve our toughest problems:

Right about now, it would be great if we could release into the Gulf of Mexico a vat of bugs that did nothing but eat gobs of oil and digest it into harmless smaller bits. Meanwhile, we’d power the cleanup vessels with microbes that swallow grass clippings or seaweed and spit out fuel, so we’d no longer need to punch holes in the bottom of the Gulf in the first place.

But those risks that Gibbs points out are of the science fiction novel variety:

What if the oil-eating bug mutates, as the horror-movie version inevitably does, and starts eating other things — like us? It’s perhaps not surprising that when bioethicists describe synthetic biology, they sound like the characters in Jurassic Park.

These are not the issues that are most pressing when thinking about putting large batches of genetically modified bacteria into the Gulf of Mexico.  The most pressing issues are slight mutations that would render the bacteria useless, despite the amount of money that was put into their engineering, or the unforeseeable impact on existing ecology.  However, Gibbs’ commentary on a general perception that science should be unregulated, even governmentally funded research, is extremely relevant.  Particularly when connections are being made between current issues, politics, and scientific research, like oil-eating bacteria in the Gulf, governmental regulation must be made more efficient.

Following the announcement of a completely synthetically created organism by J. Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith’s lab, the Obama administration expressed interest in funding a study focused on the implications of synthetic biology.  On May 27th, three synthetic biologists, a bioethicist at the Hastings Center, and a director at the National Institutes of Health gave testimony to the US House of Representatives at the hearing on “Developments in Synthetic Genomics and Implications for Health and Energy.”

A memo to the members of the Committee on Energy and Commerce lays out background information on the history and technologies of DNA manipulation; synthetic biology’s place in genetic engineering; the possible applications for synthetic biology in health, energy, and the environment (with emphasis on the success of artemisinin production and its implications for the production of other drugs); and possible ethical and regulatory issues.  Among previous responses from the federal government cited, the memo makes reference to the Department of Health and Human Services’ “Screening Framework Guidance for Synthetic Double-Stranded DNA Providers,” put into effect November 27, 2009, which recommends a scheme for screening synthetic nucleic acid synthesis technology to “reduce the risk that individuals with ill intent may exploit the commercial application” of synthetic genomics.

Representative (D-California) Henry A. Waxman, the Committee’s chairman, opened the May 27th hearing with this statement:

As policymakers, we want to foster promising discoveries, while ensuring that research is conducted and applied responsibly.  To this end, it is our job to understand what the science does and does not entail.  We need to separate splashy headlines and science-fiction scenarios from the reality of what scientists are doing and where their research might lead.

Echoing President Obama’s stated interest in carefully moving forward, Waxman hinted at future possible benefits and possible pitfalls with synthetic biology research:

We will explore potential applications to improve health, protect the environment, and meet energy needs.  We will also discuss the ethical implications and the need to responsibly manage risks.

Those chosen to speak as witnesses for the congressional hearing from the synthetic biology community were J. Craig Venter, Jay Keasling, and Drew Endy.  Venter’s 36-page testimony outlines the 15 years of work that led to his recent accomplishment and points out a few ethical issues he sees possibly plaguing the field in the future.  Trying to avoid any kind of confusion and trying to avoid particularly vibrant forms of controversy, Venter answers a handful of questions around the programming of the synthetic organism.  The attention given to possible ethical implications is comprised of a list of past bioethical studies on DNA manipulation that have been conducted by different organizations, including the Sloan Foundation and the Hastings Center, in the past few decades.  Keasling’s testimony and Endy’s testimony focus on the work that has been done at SynBERC, JBEI, and the BIOFAB, with emphasis on artemisinin production and cellulosic biofuels.

Also available are Kaebnick’s and Fauci’s testimonies, which lay out particular actions that should be taken in order to prepare practically for regulating synthetic genomics, a field of science which is still emerging and unpredictable.

To read more about some of the many interpretations of Venter and Smith’s creation from synthetic biologists, bioethicists, and others, take a look at Nature Biotechnology’s “Life after the synthetic cell.”

The information provided here by the different witnesses and the memo does not depart very largely from what has been produced by scientists and others working around synthetic biology for some time.  The focus is on convincing the public that synthetic biology’s research is not about “playing God” or controlling nature, but that it is about something decidedly related to the “fundamental beliefs about life” in a investigative or philosophic way.  Although the questions that advancements in the field (whether they receive the level of media coverage that Venter’s creation has or not) pose are quite pressing and do not seem addressable through the bureaucratic process of a congressional hearing, the attention the field receives through this process may push an ethical approach closer towards an ELSI-like review process, overlooking the more subtle shifts in academic and industry research that the field brings with it.

The Economist reported last Thursday that Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith’s lab has created the first completely chemically synthesized life form — “the first creature since the beginning of creatures that has no ancestor.”  The article is optimistically entitled “Genesis redux: A new form of life has been created in a laboratory, and the era of synthetic biology is dawning.”  The article traces the past 15 years of work that the J. Craitg Veter Institute — located in Rockville, MD, and San Diego, CA — has produced on the path to creating a completely synthesized Mycoplasma mycoides organism.  Switching gears in the production from M. genitalium to M. mycoides, the Institute changed its plans along the way as synthesizing technology advanced and difficulties were found with trying to minimize the genome of the bug in question.

The article also discusses a few alternate approaches that are currently being undertaken to produce completely synthetic creatures:  Dr. Jack Szostak’s, Dr. George Church’s, and Dr. Drew Endy’s.  The question of patenting processes of creating synthetic creatures is high on the list of issues confronting these academic scientists, and John Bingham of the Telegraph discusses the controversy of Venter’s alleged attempts at monopolizing DNA manipulation techniques here.

On the South African Leadership website, the article “Synthetic Life” emphasizes the expectations that synthetic biology is establishing for itself:  “The article in Science suggests that synthetic biology could help clean up the environment, save humanity from climate change, and address the food crisis.”  Also outlined are multiple reactions that Venter’s Science announcement received, from the Vatican’s worries about “playing God” to the ETC’s demand for “the formal, open and inclusive oversight of synthetic biology.”

The Atlantic’s William Haseltine questions the “great fanfare” surrounding this announcement, and he asserts that the feat of “modern organic chemistry” to correctly synthesize a strand of DNA about a million units in length and that of replacing a natural genome with the synthesized one does not represent a creation of life.  In his article, “Synthetic Life?  I think not,” Haseltine states that, although these are certainly important advancements, they do not imply a new era of modern biology, that that new era was opened up decades ago with the creation of tools of DNA manipulation, citing without naming Jay Keasling’s Artemisinin Project and others’ advancements in cellulosic biofuels.  Originality is his metric for success in the “creation of life,” and this project’s end product does not meet these requirements.

Nonetheless, the creation of a completely synthetic Mycoplasma mycoides and its reporting in Science on May 20th has sparked a direct response from President Obama, who wrote a letter to political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Amy Gutmann, asking her to lead a study on the “implications of this scientific milestone.”  This letter can be read here.

That the successful and “complete” synthesis and “hijack” of a M. mycoides organism is being heralded globally as a large step forward, in science that can be claimed under the term synthetic biology, highlights the ambiguity of defining advances in the field, and it raises questions about how science is funded and undertaken in American academia.  The actual technologies associated with producing this creature are used frequently by synthetic biologists and other biological engineers for other purposes than producing The First Creature Without an Ancestor.  This 15 year long project cost an estimated $40 million, and questions of cost, profit, and limits loom as we move forward knowing one more thing is possible.

In her recently published Nature news article, “Pentagon turns to ’softer’ sciences”, Sharon Weinberger discusses how the US defense department believes that the fields of biology (including synthetic), cybersecurity and social sciences have “‘a potential for being game-changers’ on the battlefield.”  Moving away from “applied research” to “basic research” by funding these fields is important because it will lead to the “next generation of technology” and “supports a pipeline of researchers and graduate students,” says Zachary Lemnios, the defence department’s chief technology officer and director of defence research and engineering.

On the topic of synthetic biology, Weinberger presents the following:

Among the areas that are fast becoming a priority for the Pentagon is synthetic biology, which seeks to build new organisms or re-engineer existing ones to perform specific functions. Lemnios says that the Pentagon is interested in understanding “how organisms sense and respond to stimuli — such as chemicals, ions and metals, or electrical, magnetic, optical and mechanical impulses — at a genetic level”. That knowledge, he says, could help researchers to design “living sentinels” that can monitor the presence of explosives or chemical pollutants. “We can also develop tools that will allow us to detect adversarial uses of synthetic biology,” he says.

According to Lemnios, the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Virginia, is looking at how to biosynthesize targeted antibiotics that work by sensing and attacking specific pathogens. President Barack Obama’s proposed budget for next year would also provide $20 million to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), another research arm of the Pentagon, to fund work in synthetic biology.

Social scientists’ worries about the “smoothing out” of edges in scientific investigation may be extended to synthetic biology as well:

Not all social scientists welcome the Pentagon’s support, particularly if they are not happy with the direction that the military pushes the research. “There’s something that happens when social science enters into this militarized model; all the rough edges, no matter how complicated, are smoothed, and the models themselves become pretty simplistic,” says David Price, a cultural anthropologist at Saint Martin’s University in Lacey, Washington state. “I worry in general what’s happening to social science; new funding programmes like this are out there, while money for basic social science has gone away.”

What does it mean for synthetic biology research to be funded by the US defense department?  How will these interests change the course and goals of the field?  And what ramifications are there to “smoothing out the edges” of this kind of research to be applied to fighting situations in Iraq and Afghanistan?

I first came to know of Sheila Jasanoff in July at the National Academies’ symposium on opportunities and challenges in synthetic biology. She eloquently opened the meeting by encouraging participants to consider whether the emerging field of synthetic biology might present an opportunity for a kind of second enlightenment that allowed us to “put science back into society in meaningful ways.” Who gets to imagine the scientific future? Who will give meaning to this future, and how? Who will be responsible for it? Thus Jasanoff began to “problematize” conventional wisdom about how biotechnology does and ought to advance.

Last night I read the first chapter of Dr. Jasanoff’s latest book, “Designs on Nature.” The book is a comparative analysis of how three political cultures (Germany, U.S., and U.K.) are trying to steer biotechnological development toward improving the human condition. It was an exhilarating read. It acquainted me with the constructivist approach to scientific meaning, the concept of “social kinds,” and the notion that natural and social meaning is “coproduced.” It affirmed many of the concepts and precepts I have learned from the Rabinow lab (no offense intended, Paul – just my personal measure of healthy skepticism). I can’t wait to read the rest of Jasanoff’s book.

As someone who usually “sides” with the natural scientists, however, I find myself anxious about some of these new ideas. For example, I was a little troubled by the implications of a constructivist view of science and technology. Jasanoff asserts that we must be “skeptical of absolutist claims about objectivity and progress” because terms as seemingly antipodal as “nature” and “culture” have different meanings in different social contexts that deny them universality. I agree with that notion as it relates to creating useful science policy in one political culture versus any other. But a purely constructivist view seems to overly discount the universal properties of scientific and technological knowledge. After all, science and technology does, in fact, demonstrate a converging, deterministic tendency (or else China would still be trying to independently develop PCR, right?). At its logical extension, the constructivist view seems to suggest that the empirical results of a biology experiment in Hong Kong are not the same as they would be in Canada or any other political culture. That’s hard for scientists at the lab bench to swallow.

It was also deeply discouraging to hear such a clear and reasoned voice implying what to me sounded creepily like, ‘Because of their realist tendencies, the biotechnologists working to expand our knowledge of and control over the natural world are especially unqualified to assess the meaning and significance of their own work.’ There, too, a big tension between “natural” and “human” scientists. Or perhaps I am reading the constructivist approach too literally?

If from venue to venue we could find the happy middle ground where humanist constructivism and scientific determinism can not just tolerate but function thoughtfully with one another, then we may do a better job of meeting Jasanoff’s challenge of putting science into the public in deeper, more meaningful ways than ever before.

Finally, though the actors and venues change slightly, it seems to me that the word “problematize” is nearly interchangeable with the word “politicize” in our context. (To problematize is to have experts make judgments about techno-scientific progress in more or less public venues, whereas to politicize is to do the same in a very public, democratic, and non-expert way.) Again, as one who tends to identify with the biotechnology community, I wonder what kind of burden “problematizing” daily research activities represents not just to the researchers themselves, but also to the publics that rely on continued discoveries for an improved quality of life. To put a cost around problematization is not to say it isn’t worth it, but rather to encourage us to think about how to engineer problematization into emerging fields like synthetic biology in order to reduce the time and effort needed to vigilantly examine and re-examine how we are or are not contributing to “the good life.” (For example, I have suggested to some within SynBERC that we build into our internal proposal process some means for operationalizing core values such as safety and security by requiring applicants to include meaningful activities that promote such values. The idea hasn’t exactly caught fire, yet.)

I am motivated by practical concerns that move research forward in the right direction. As I’m feeling my way through some of these concepts, which are new to me, I invite comments from those who have thought through these issues more carefully.

On July 24th, 2009, the Edge Foundation organized a forum for scientists, entrepreneurs, cultural impresarios and journalists to discuss synthetic biology from the perspective of George Church and Craig Venter. �?Look here for nearly six hours of lecture and discussion on their description of and vision for synthetic (and personal) genomics: �?Edge Master Class 2009.

Here’s a song called Ambien that my band and I wrote. It’s about the untoward effects of the green economy on one auto worker. In the story, he spirals out of control, finding himself no longer in demand and with little to cling to in life except his 2003 Ford Expedition. We wrote the song a couple of years ago, and with the subsequent collapse of GM and others, the song has gained an eery prophetic quality.

I attended a recent Washington, D.C. meeting on Opportunities and Challenges in the Emerging Field of Synthetic Biology, co-hosted by the National Academies, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Royal Society. The meeting brought together an international cast of scientists, policymakers, and social scientists to discuss the technical and social barriers to achieving the promise of this emerging field. Presentations, audio and transcripts from the meeting are available on the National Academies website. SynBERC investigators Drew Endy and Paul Rabinow were featured speakers, and here are two representative quotes from them:

“The question of what constitutes a good life today, and the contribution of the bio-sciences to that form of life, must be vigilantly posed and re-posed.” ?Äì Paul Rabinow

“Today, each biotechnology project requires a Hercules.” ?Äì Drew Endy

Here are four of several recurring themes I observed during the conference:

1. Funding agencies and universities tend to reward application-based projects over engineering projects. This leads to novel systems, but it provides little incentive for researchers to develop the engineering infrastructure needed to make biology easier to engineer for future generations.

2. Today?Äôs intellectual property environment threatens to stifle creativity and retard economic gains. New practices and models for protecting IP while allowing others to build on it are necessary for synthetic biology to achieve the ambitious promise envisioned its practitioners.

3. The synbio community needs to come together to solve the technical problems of standardization. It is a huge task.

4. The synbio community has done a good job of trying to engage citizens about the challenges and opportunities of the field, but it can and must do better. Citizens don?Äôt need to have a PhD to make intelligent judgments about science. New, more democratic forms of communication can help us overcome traditional boundaries to citizen participation in science and technology policy.

On July 9th and 10th at the National Academies’ Keck Center (500 5th Street NW) in Washington DC, the National Academies (CSTL, BLS, STEP, and NAE), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Royal Society will be hosting a symposium on synthetic biology entitled “Opportunities and Challenges in the Emerging Field of Synthetic Biology.” �?The symposium “has been organized to bring together the scientific, engineering, legal, and policy communities along with members of the public to explore the opportunities and challenges posed by the emerging field of synthetic biology.” �?Paul Rabinow and Drew Endy will be the event’s keynote speakers.

Go here for more information and for an unedited transcript of the event when it is available.

“The definition of synthetic biology depends on whether you’re trying to make money right now or not.” – An unknown synthetic biologist interviewed by Mark B?ºnger, Director of Research, Lux Research