{"id":106118,"date":"2020-04-27T10:03:04","date_gmt":"2020-04-27T17:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/why-synthetic-biology-is-about-much-more-than-resurrecting-woolly-mammoths"},"modified":"2020-04-27T10:03:04","modified_gmt":"2020-04-27T17:03:04","slug":"why-synthetic-biology-is-about-much-more-than-resurrecting-woolly-mammoths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/why-synthetic-biology-is-about-much-more-than-resurrecting-woolly-mammoths","title":{"rendered":"Why synthetic biology is about much more than resurrecting woolly mammoths"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ja0euppwnGc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Synthetic biology has been described as a kind of \u201cgenetic engineering on steroids\u201d.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>\n<em>Synthetic biology <\/em>\u2026Simply mentioning this term \u2014 whether at a cocktail party or on a pop culture TV show \u2014 evokes a plethora of responses. These could range from puzzled looks to questions about the somewhat famous, though likely quixotic, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.etcgroup.org\/content\/mammoth-distraction-syn-bio-and-de-extinction\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow external\">quest to resurrect a woolly mammoth<\/a> from remnants recovered in Siberia. Also, on the radar screen is synthetic biology as applied to the development of drugs and biological weapons. But flying below the radar \u2014 and, oddly, the sweet spot for investments by governments and private industry \u2014 is a less sexy focus on the industrial uses of synthetic biology. Such uses range from environmental clean-ups to new energy sources.<\/p>\n<p>What do we mean by \u201csynthetic biology\u201d? To keep things simple, synthetic biology has been described as a kind of \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.etcgroup.org\/content\/extreme-genetic-engineering-introduction-synthetic-biology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow external\">genetic engineering on steroids<\/a>\u201d. Plain, old genetic engineering includes a range of strategies, the classic one being transgenics \u2014 copying a gene from one biological species and inserting it into the cell nucleus of another species. This has enabled bacteria to produce human insulin and plants to produce their own defenses against pests and herbicides such as glyphosate. Genetic engineering also include CRISPR technology, which can function as a kind of line item editing.<\/p>\n<p>In contrast, synthetic biology involves the rewriting of large segments of the genomes of organisms, resulting in what effectively are new organisms. Whereas the mammoth revival is synthetic biology and while it gets good media attention, it\u2019s more a cartoon use of synthetic biology. On the other hand, the transformations that could occur by creating new life forms \u2014 that\u2019s really what synthetic biology is \u2014 may not be so sexy. Yet, they could change the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Synthetic biology has been described as a kind of \u201cgenetic engineering on steroids\u201d. Synthetic biology \u2026Simply mentioning this term \u2014 whether at a cocktail party or on a pop culture TV show \u2014 evokes a plethora of responses. These could range from puzzled looks to questions about the somewhat famous, though likely quixotic, quest to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":554,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/554"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}