Guide To Learn
Synthetic biology poses new ethical dilemmas related to human life. As genome editing becomes more advanced, new questions arise for bioethicists. Synthetic biology pros and cons involve not just scientific issues, but also moral issues. For example, is it ethical to eliminate genetic disorders? Will genome editing deepen inequality as richer families can afford to […]
Synthetic biology has already been applied in the field of agriculture to produce plants that are more nutritious, more resistant to pests, or lower in fertilizer needs. For example, there is a synthetic biology wheat variant that resists a common fungus, resulting in a crop that yields more wheat while maintaining the same carbon footprint. […]
Some ethicists worry that synthetic biology makes it easy to design dangerous organisms that could be released maliciously. However, synthetic biology can also mitigate bioterrorism risks by allowing scientists to create a variant of a microorganism that is less dangerous, which could out-compete a dangerous virus or bacteria strain. Synthetic biology could also be used […]
Personalized medicine to treat chronic disease is as important in the 21st century as treating infectious disease was in the 20th century. Synthetic biology may enable new treatment techniques for cancer, immune diseases, and metabolic disorders. Given that these diseases are leading causes of death, synthetic biology applied to personalized medicine could be as groundbreaking […]
Sustainable manufacturing is firmly on the positive side of the pros and cons of synthetic biology. Unfortunately engineered yeasts and bacteria produce unsustainably harvested compounds, like flower oils for perfume. Using living systems as a natural bio-factory to develop drug compounds or fuel ingredients eliminates the industrial waste of a purely chemical manufacturing process. Industrial […]
Synthetic biology has already enabled the rapid public health response to Covid-19. Novartis developed a Covid-19 vaccine by deploying an existing synthetic biology emergency vaccine development pipeline that had been designed in response to the H1N1 flu pandemic. Not only can synthetic biology help with vaccine development, there are synthetic biology applications in vaccine delivery. At […]