"After doing cell therapy for so many years, I feel I can't do it anymore, but with synthetic biology, I feel hope is coming again," sighed Tian Zhigang, a professor at the school of life sciences, University of science and technology of China. Synthetic biology is an engineering discipline that uses gene manipulation tools to regulate and transform life behavior or recreate life forms. It is bringing hope for many imminent or promising applications. Academician Zhao Guoping, one of the earliest initiators of synthetic biology in China, explained that the core of synthetic biology different from other traditional life sciences (such as gene science, microbiology, biochemistry, etc.) is its "Engineering Essence" - the main task of synthetic biology is to design corresponding "products" according to people's needs. Just like designing and manufacturing refrigerators to refrigerate and store food, synthetic organisms have a clear purpose and clear products. For example, people have actually hired microorganisms to work for themselves thousands of years ago, such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is cultivated silently to make people "have a good drink". However, this cooperation is achieved by chance. For a long time, human beings can only cooperate with microorganisms in the form of accidentally discovering a working partner. After drinking beer, people want to drink yogurt the next day. Yeast is useless. They can only go out and turn left to find lactic acid bacteria. On the third day, if humans want to "brew" something else, they have to go to the waves of hundreds of millions of bacteria. This approach is very inefficient. With synthetic biology, scientists can transform the structure of bacteria, create life that does not exist in nature, and even combine it with artificial substances such as semiconductors to accurately produce what we need. Today, synthetic biology has been combined with nanotechnology, mechanical engineering, big data, AI learning and other fields, and has been applied in manufacturing, medical treatment, energy, agriculture, consumer goods and other fields. 1、 Boost agricultural development Last September, the Chinese Academy of Sciences team completed a major breakthrough in carbon dioxide synthetic starch. In the future, the time-consuming and land-consuming agricultural process may become an efficient and centralized industrial process. Behind this is the repeated attempt of synthetic biologists to "design synthesis test learning" for more than a decade. It is true that the cost of converting starch in this way can not compete with agricultural planting, but synthetic biology has also assisted agricultural production in many other aspects. Some substances naturally produced by microorganisms can be used as pesticides, which are far more efficient, safe and environment-friendly than chemical pesticides. They have an indispensable strategic position in the field of plant pest control and food security protection in China. For example, pyrethrin is a kind of natural substance produced by compositae plants. It is non-toxic to agricultural beneficial insects such as bees and butterflies, but it can effectively kill a variety of pests. It is very friendly to mammals and stays in the environment for a short time. How to obtain pyrethroids by conventional methods? Plant chrysanthemums, and then find a way to extract them from the plant. Below is a beautiful pyrethrum: However, it takes time to plant chrysanthemums, and it takes a while to extract the desired chemicals after harvest, so the output is not large enough and the cost is relatively high. After all, plants only produce pyrethroids to survive, not to make biological pesticides for humans, so the content of pyrethroids in their bodies is not high. The idea of synthetic biology is to find out how plants make pyrethroids, and then assemble the "components" that can work in plant cells into microbial cells in an assembly line, so that bacteria that can reproduce in large quantities and are cheap to raise can come to modern factories. When the technology is mature, we are not afraid of insufficient. 2、 New dawn of medical treatment How to transform synthetic biology technology into medical application has attracted extensive attention in the scientific and medical circles. Do you remember the sky high price cancer drug car-t of 1.2 million yuan / piece? This cancer treatment technology takes T-cells from the patient's blood and, after a tailored modification, allows them to learn to recognize and attack cancer cells in the patient's body. It sounds beautiful, but it has a limited scope of use and a troublesome side effect: if you identify it wrong, you will beat yourself up. Synthetic biology is expected to allow the car-t cell team to bring its own logic circuit to judge the changes in the treatment process, and accurately attack without harming the innocent. Tian Zhigang, a professor at the school of life sciences at the University of science and technology of China, lamented: "cell therapy has been done for so many years. I feel I can't do it anymore, but with synthetic biology, I feel hope is coming again." Another idea of synthetic biology to deal with cancer is to transform bacteria. The team of Shenzhen Institute of advanced technology of Chinese Academy of Sciences is turning bacteria into more targeted, smarter and more efficient anti-tumor "weapons". On the one hand, the modified bacteria can "kick up" the body's own immune cells and make them get up and work. There is cancer here; On the other hand, it can help transport drug molecules. At present, the artificial bacteria transformed by the team has entered the preclinical research stage and achieved ideal curative effect. It is expected to become the world's first living biological drug for the treatment of solid tumors. (schematic diagram of engineering bacteria recognizing and acting on cancer cells, source: genennews. Com) Synthetic biology is also useful in basic diagnosis and treatment. Researchers from the synthetic biology team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have rebuilt bacteria to implant repeatedly curved hydrogels, which can be adhered to the surface of human skin. When the biomaterial comes into contact with a specific substance, the implanted bacteria are stimulated to glow, reminding scientists of the existence of certain chemical molecules. This technology may be used in the future to detect toxic substances, pathogens and allergens on protective gloves, and even on human skin for preliminary medical diagnosis. (with such gloves, it will not be so easy for the crafty people to poison me in the future! Photo source: MIT News) Medical beauty is another track with great economic prospects. The natural polymer material PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoate), which can be mass produced by synthetic biological technology, is being regarded by the market as the best choice for light medicine and beauty. PHA degradation cycle is less than 6 months, and it is completely degraded into water and carbon dioxide in all natural environments. PHA drug micro nano carrier has slower degradation ability and better biocompatibility. Its degradation speed is slower than polylactic acid (PLA). It is a slow category among many biodegradable materials. Because its degradation products are released slowly and have less stimulation to human environment, it will play a role in the application scenarios of medical and beauty fillers, skin care raw materials, surgical sutures and so on. Lanjing microorganism is the third enterprise in the world and the first enterprise in China with PHA mass production technology. It has signed an agreement with a listed company to establish a joint venture to jointly complete product R & D, compliance declaration and subsequent commercial promotion. 3、 Artificial food The concept of artificial meat is also popular in recent years. It may be the most well-known application direction of synthetic biology in the eyes of the public. Unfortunately, no matter taking meat synthesized from plant protein or directly culturing animal cells, the taste of artificial meat is still different from that of real meat, the price is not cheap and the acceptance of consumers is general. However, because people's desire for meat is far from over, but everyone is still thinking about night barbecue. It still has broad prospects that only 1% of the land and 1% of the water of the traditional breeding industry can produce artificial meat of meat. Other artificial foods are more successful and more desirable. For example, Nestle, a giant in the food industry, is developing human lactating cells to be cultured in vitro in a medium close to the breast, and then induced to produce breast milk. In this way, mothers who do not have the conditions to breastfeed can obtain better and more nutritious alternatives than formula. (source: biomilq. Com) At present, synthetic biology can completely restore the texture and taste of products, is artificial honey. In the natural environment, the way bees make honey is to swallow the pollen and spit it out after microbial fermentation in the stomach. What synthetic biology does is put microorganisms into a culture system to simulate the process occurring in the bee's stomach. The purpose of this is not to take off your pants and fart. The large-scale beekeeping industry is easy to have an impact on the wild bee population. Removing bees from the honey supply chain can better protect biodiversity. (don't make honey by bees. It's really not bragging bee. Source: melibio. Com) If you don't bring it for people to eat, you have to mention the dazzling news "industrialized carbon monoxide synthetic protein" published by the feed Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of agricultural sciences last October. This technology for synthesizing Clostridium ethanolarum protein has an industrial capacity of 10000 tons, which can be used as feed for pigs, cattle, sheep and chickens in farms. Although the protein produced by bacteria can not completely replace soybean meal, it is expected to alleviate the pressure on China's annual import of 100 million tons of soybean. It is of great significance to ensure food security. 4、 Sustainable new energy In recent years, the concept of new energy has gradually penetrated into people's daily life. Who has few friends driving new energy vehicles and staring at the stocks of new energy sector funds? In order not to tie their lives to fossil energy (mainly oil) that will be used up and pollute the environment, people have been looking for sustainable new energy spare tires. In addition to the familiar wind and solar energy, bioenergy is also an important exploration direction. For example, unknown plants are actually good at using energy. The utilization rate of carbon in the air by photosynthesis is close to 100%, but the energy conversion efficiency of the whole process is very low, generally below 5%. Synthetic biology has a big brain hole. One after another, scientists explore the possibility of integrating solid-state semiconductor light absorbers and some bacteria into a semiconductor cell hybrid system, so that organisms can more effectively capture light energy and transfer it to sugars and other substances for fixation. In other studies, scientists have tried to improve the efficiency of microorganisms in the use of sugar so that they can convert sugar into fuels such as gasoline, diesel and ethanol. Once the whole passage is opened, it is no longer a daydream to directly turn air into clean fuel. There are many places where existing new energy technologies and related products can be expected to cooperate with synthetic biology: For example, hydrogen fuel cell, everyone said yes! Efficient and clean without emission. The only problem is that it is very expensive, because some precious metal catalysts have to be used, which made the price of platinum rise all the way last year. By using synthetic biology, microbes can turn some cellulose into a specific pore, large surface area hydrogel instead of precious metals (such as platinum), and the cost of batteries will also decrease. Platinum necklaces can also be bought cheaper. Why not. In addition, the recycling of waste batteries has always been a big problem. The existing methods have large secondary pollution and the efficiency of recycling useful metals is not very good. Battery recycling is limited by high cost, high energy density and harsh treatment conditions. New methods to improve microbial or cell-free systems can improve the recovery technology of energy storage through a variety of chemicals. Nowadays, people have found that some special microorganisms not only will not be poisoned by heavy metals, but also can use them upside down. For example, the "Iron Man" sulfur reducing bacillus that can use Cobalt to make metal armor for himself to protect himself. Synthetic biology is trying to improve more efficient processes