Synthetic Biology

A draft foresight paper on synthetic biology released by the Department of Biotechnology has stressed the need for a national policy that can consolidate India’s stand on the issue.

• The document looks not only at the global policies and protocols that have to be kept in mind while developing such a policy but also attempts to define synthetic biology and how intellectual property rights will be applicable to resulting processes and products.

Synthetic biology refers to the science of using genetic sequencing, editing, and modification to create unnatural organisms or organic molecules that can function in living systems. Synthetic biology enables scientists to design and synthesise new sequences of DNA from scratch.

Synthetic biology has applications in various fields from developing synthetic organisms for vaccination to creating natural products in a lab such as vanillin, the organic compound extracted from vanilla seeds, which can now be grown in yeasts with additional plant genomes.

• In the pharmaceutical industry, synthetic biology can be used to make natural compounds such as artemisinin used for the treatment of malaria and Car T cell therapy for cancer treatment
• It is starting to be used in the fashion industry as well; some companies are exploring the possibility of dyeing jeans without producing hazardous waste.
• Then there are companies using it to deliver fixed nitrogen to plants instead of using fertilisers, engineering microbes to create food additives or brew proteins.