Overview
Biotechnology partners with biology to create products and services, like engineering skin microbes to fight cancer or brewing medicines from yeast. This industry, already 5 percent of US GDP, is poised for significant growth. Synthetic biology, a subset of biotechnology focusing on enhancing living systems, relies on DNA sequencing and synthesis. DNA sequencers are machines that read or decode specific DNA molecules, while synthesizers write user-specifi ed sequences of DNA. Rapid progress in these technologies is driving innovation and expanding biotechnology’s potential applications.
Biology as a manufacturing process is distributed; leaves do not come from a central production facility but rather grow on trees everywhere. However, commercial biotechnology has become centralized and capital intensive. This contrast suggests a potential paradigm shift toward a more distributed approach in biotechnology, aligning it more closely with nature’s decentralized production model.
Synthetic biology merges biology, engineering, and computer science to modify and create living systems, developing novel biological functions served by amino acids, proteins, and cells not found in nature. This fi eld creates reusable biological “parts,” streamlining design processes and reducing the need to start from scratch, thus advancing biotechnology’s capabilities and efficiency.
Synthetic biology has applications in medicine, agriculture, manufacturing, and sustainability. DNA and RNA synthesis underlies all mRNA vaccines, including those for COVID-19. Synthetic biology can also cultivate drought-resistant crops and enable cells to be programmed to manufacture medicines or fuel on an agile, distributed basis.
