George Church with a tape for measuring his facial morphology for a research project PERSONAL GENOME PROJECT
After 10 years of tinkering with biological circuits, we need to explain—once again and clearly—the rationale for doing synthetic biology. Despite the musings of some, the field is not limited to toy projects. Metabolic engineers have clearly articulated their goals of manufacturing cheap alkane fuels and much-needed drugs, such as the antimalarial drug artemisinin.[1. D.K. Ro et al., "Production of the antimalarial drug precursor artemisinic acid in engineered yeast," Nature 440: 940-43, 2006.] (See “Tinkering with Life.”) But for building DNA nanostructures or whole bacterial genomes, the rationales have been less clear—initially confined to cartoonish shapes and watermark sequences, respectively. Recent advances, however—such as a DNA nanostructure that combines cell targeting, molecular logic, and cancer-fighting ability[2. S.M. Douglas et al., “A logic-gated DNA capsule for ...
