Genetic-Engineering Competitors Create Modular DNA Dev Kit
College and high school students are helping MIT scientists develop an open source development kit for biological systems that could do for cells what Linux has done for computers.
As part of the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, last week, Peking University students created tiny assembly lines out of bacteria. Their entry, "Towards a Self-Differentiated Bacterial Assembly Line," won them the grand prize among 50 teams from around the world.
"Biology is going to be able to make the things that we want," said Tom Knight, an MIT engineer and co-founder of iGEM. "And when that happens, the economics of production are going to change dramatically. It doesn't take a billion-dollar [facility] to make stuff. It takes a hundred-dollar incubator."
The competition is a showcase for the burgeoning field of synthetic biology. Knight and his colleagues Randy Rettberg and Drew Endy, who created the contest in 2004, want to make biological systems easy to build by applying the tools of computer science and engineering: using standard parts and modular design to simplify complex systems. The goal is to create "genetic Legos" that could produce any chemical, from ethanol to pharmaceuticals.
The leader of the Peking University team, Yifan Yang, said that his team will refine its work back in China. He sees a wide variety of applications for his team's project, including biosynthesis of hydrogen.
He said it could be possible to "let some of the cells become anaerobic to produce hydrogen, while their neighbors provide them energy with aerobic respiration or photosynthesis."
All of the teams contributed standardized DNA snippets, or BioBricks, to the Registry of Standard Biological Parts. One of the best new BioBricks was the Melbourne team's gas-vesicles code. It results "in buoyancy chambers that can be booted up inside any bacteria," Endy said. In other words, the BioBrick allows researchers to make floating bacteria at will. It could be used for harvesting bacteria that have generated a product, like biofuel.
The University of California-Berkeley team created bacto-blood -- an E. coli-hemoglobin mashup. The E. coli were engineered to produce hemoglobin -- which carries oxygen to cells -- and a chemical called trehalose. The trehalose made the cells able to withstand freeze-drying. Freeze-dried blood could come in handy in developing countries with limited refrigeration. It could be easily stored -- just add (sterile) water when needed.
New BioBricks are continually added to the thousands that already exist in the registry. The goal is to create an "Open Microbe," an "open source chassis for assembling biological systems," Knight said.
A consortium of universities will release the first draft of the BioBrick Public License in 2008. It will allow anyone to use the biological parts -- essentially a cellular dev kit -- for free.
Knight believes the collegiate competitors of today will be the Packards, Wozniaks and Bells of tomorrow.
"The last century was dominated by engineering based upon the scientific principles that come out of physics," Knight said. "This century will be dominated by the engineering that comes out of biology and biochemistry."
For now, they remain contemporary college students who, despite their scientific acumen, like having fun. As the anxious competitors awaited the announcement of the winner, a student from Missouri Western, Jeremy Baumgardner, led the crowd in a spontaneous group dance to the hip-hop anthem, "Cupid Shuffle." Some romance also brewed. One University of California-San Francisco team member, Jimmy Huang, blogged about his experience, including why he cared about the winning team: "The cute girl from Peking University also gave me a T-Shirt.... I hope to see her again maybe at another iGEM Jamboree if not at a Synthetic Biology meeting of sorts."
"Cute girl" could not be reached for comment.