THE NEXT BIG STEPS FOR SCIENCE
SCIENCEPHOTO^ LIBRARY,^ IGEM,ALAMYA capsule containing bacteria and
nutrients that were developed
to detect rotting meat- CELLULAR TOOLSETS
Synthetic biologists playing with building bricks
Anyone who travels knows what
a pain it is to have the right power
adaptor. In electronics, parts were
standardised decades ago, so that
every time you needed a diode you
didn’t have to invent it.
Genetic engineering has been
slow to catch up, but now the
BioBricks Foundation is striving
to make synthetic biology more
productive and creative by making
the parts fit together easily. And
nowhere is the commodificationof biology more apparent than
in the International Genetically
Engineered Machine (iGEM)
competition. The challenge is to
design synthetic life using only the
parts available from a ‘shopping
catalogue’ of synthetic biology.
Each part is free and, in principle,
standardised to fit together with
the others.
In 2012, one team created a
bacterium that changes colour
in the presence of rotting meat.“NASA has designed a biocapsule out of
carbon nanofibres, which will be implanted
underneath the skin of an astronaut”
- IMMUNITY TO RADIATION
Shielding astronauts from health hazards in space
At Ames Research Centre in Silicon
Valley, NASA scientists are looking at
how to equip astronauts to endure
the extreme hostility of space.
One of the biggest barriers to
human exploration is that with
current propulsion technology,
trips will take years. That exposes
astronauts to mutagenic and life-
threatening levels of solar radiation
and cosmic rays. Radiation slices
up DNA, which can cause all sorts
of problems, not least cancers. But
shielding is heavy, making it costly
to launch off Earth.
At Ames, they are designing a
synthetic biological circuit that will
produce cytokines – the body’s own
defences against radiation damage- when it meets space radiation. But
where do you put it? Having free-
floating synthetic bacteria in your
body is not a good idea. So NASA
has designed a biocapsule out of
carbon nanofibres whose pores are
too small to let the bacteria escape,
but big enough to let the cytokines
they produce out. This capsule will
be implanted underneath the skin
of an astronaut.
3. OCEAN CLEANERS
Engineered microbes to clean the seas
The 2012 iGEM runners-up from University College London
(UCL) came up with the idea of cleaning up the oceans by
assembling a plastic island. There are millions of tonnes of
plastic rubbish floating around in the oceans – mostly as
billions of tiny fragments. These can accumulate in ocean
gyres – areas where currents meet, causing a vortex – and
enter the food chain, often killing wildlife.
UCL’s team designed salt-tolerant, buoyant bacteria that
would identify plastic fragments and either degrade them
or aggregate them into lumps, which could be collected into
an island they called – in James Bond villain style – the
Plastic Republic.
With safety in mind and to ensure no environmental
contamination, the bugs were engineered with a ‘kill switch’,
so that their DNA was not able to spread to other organisms.Cytokine proteins are usually
produced within the body’s
white blood cellsIn 2012, a team from UCL proposed a
method for cleaning up the oceans
using genetically engineered bacteria