Drew Endy, a leading researcher in a new field called synthetic biology, gave a lecture at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine recently, explaining how researchers in this promising new field are shaping the future of life sciences. Endy, who does his work at Stanford, answers questions on synthetic biology's potential, intellectual property concerns and ethical implications.

Synthetic biology relies largely on engineering techniques and DNA to create new biological systems and structures, such as genetically altered bacteria.  Because that research often entails rewriting the genetic codes of organisms, some raise concerns about whether they are creating new life forms in their experiments.  Still, many experts believe that synthetic biology holds enormous potential in the medical and industrial fields, but others worry about ethical and national security implications.

Q. Do you see new ways to fight diseases as one of the future promises of synthetic biology?
A. It’s one of the original promises of biotechnology … it’d be surprising if we can’t use the construction of various chemicals via biosynthetic routes as an important therapeutic platform.

Q. What is an example of how synthetic biology could lead to more effective medical therapies?
A. Making a new category of smart drugs. A lot of times, people think about smart drugs all being implemented by the chemistry that causes things to be routed to particular places, or taken out and processed in particular ways. But it turns out that you can actually engineer sensors in living cells whether they be bacteria or therapeutic T-cells. So health and medical applications, from biosynthesis of chemicals to living therapeutics seems pretty reasonable as two examples of expected applications.

Q. Do you feel that funding levels are sufficient to carry out the kind of research you want done? 
A.Funding levels are negligible. They’re nowhere close to being matched to the opportunities. It’s a new field, and there’s been a significant underinvestment in the tools supporting synthetic biology going back decades. One could smartly spend, just on tools alone, about $25 million a year, not on any specific research project but just on things like getting better at building DNA, making better component libraries, and sharing them openly.

Q. How do you think the presidential election will affect funding levels for synthetic biology, and science in general?
A.We’re standing at the beginning of a century where we as a civilization are prepared to become significantly better at engineering biology, and to think that this will not have profound impact and importance on our economic and national security would be a gross oversight. My hope would be that independent of any particular administration now and for the foreseeable future there will be ongoing and significant investment in the life sciences, in biotechnology and in other basic sciences.

Q. How does the intellectual property and information-sharing framework affect synthetic biology’s progress?
A. If you look at the history of biotechnology, I would describe the economic landscape as dominated by balkanized monopolies where you have individual organizations that have exclusive ownership of the uses of different genetic functions. They tend to be funded to develop applications based on only a small number of these different genetic functions. So you run into a funny situation. The actual economic return of a lot of this stuff is not in the one, two or three applications that any one particular company can figure out how to deliver to market. It tends to be in innumerable applications. 

Q. You said you are involved in The BioBricks Foundation. What is it and why is it important?
A. The BioBricks Foundation is a nonprofit whose goal is to transition biotechnology from a landscape dominated by balkanized monopolies to what others might recognize as a network where there’s an open technology platform around the genetic componentry. It’s free for people to use. And then you build products and services on top of that. An example from a different area would be a company like Google. Google is built on top of open and free software. 

Q. Does having genetic code made freely available pose any security risks?
A. The answer is yes, there are some. They’re relatively well-known as they exist today, and are few in number, thankfully. For example, if you could use DNA synthesis to reconstruct genomes, then you might be able to obtain the genomes for human pathogens that are otherwise difficult to acquire. Ebola would be one example, where we don’t know, to my understanding, the natural reservoir of the virus. So if you wanted to get access for Ebola, you would have to either wait for the next outbreak, fly somewhere, risk death and return. Or you could go on the Internet, download the DNA sequence and pay somebody $20,000 to make it for you. So that’s an interesting possibility. What could we do to prepare against such a misapplication? Actually, this one is relatively well-prepared against. We could be in close communication with all the constructors of synthetic DNA and ask them to check what they’re making so that they don’t unwittingly make for somebody the genome of a hemorrhagic fever. Let’s start with that. There’s still the question of, would you want the sequences of human pathogens freely available on the Internet? I think the research community has strongly come out in favor of keeping the sequences open. There aren’t a lot of examples, if any, of diseases being cured in secret. So it just doesn’t seem like the way to go.

Q. Have you ever been challenged by religious arguments against your work?
A. I don’t know that it’s a religious question. I’ve had questions in the form, “what’s wrong with the DNA that God gives us, or what’s wrong with the DNA from nature?” I don’t know if anything is wrong with it. One thing to note is that we can learn how things work by taking them apart and by putting them back together … so I think that’s very consistent with somebody who would want to celebrate the work of God, if that’s your worldview, by understanding how things work and what’s out there.

Q. What do you say to the argument that only God should do the type of reconstructing that you’re researching?
A. I think it’s a different question if the concerns have to do with making something new. I don’t view making something new, whether it’s reprogramming the bouquet of a bacteria or a more serious project. I don’t view those projects as creating life, but rather construction projects. For me as an engineer, there’s a big difference between the words creation and construction. Creation implies I have unlimited power, perfect understanding of the universe, and the ability to manipulate matter at a godlike level. That’s not what I have. I have an imperfect understanding, a budget, limited resources, and I can only manipulate things quite crudely. In that context, with those constraints, I’m a more humble constructor.