Synthetic Biology: The "weapon" of Life Science

Since mankind entered the 21st century, a new interdisciplinary subject "synthetic biology" has become a hot topic in the international scientific frontier.

Synthetic biology, can use Escherichia coli to produce bulk chemical materials, get rid of the shackles of petroleum raw materials; Yeast production of artemisinic acid and rare ginsenosides, reduce costs, promote the development of new drugs; The engineered bacteria do not "accidentally injure" normal cells, but attack cancer cells exclusively. Creating "artificial cells" with artificial genomes to explore the way of life evolution; Using DNA to store data and develop biocomputers... As a new force in the scientific community, synthetic biology has made rapid progress and has shown broad application prospects in the fields of chemical industry, energy, materials, agriculture, medicine, environment and health.

To explore the origin and evolution of life

Interpret the "code" to transform nature

Life is the most complex material being in the world. Since the birth of human beings, we have been searching up and down in the long journey of understanding life. From the ancient Chinese "Huangdi Neijing" and "Compendium of Materia Medica", to the modern western naturalists' classification of animals and plants, human understanding of life phenomena, are from the "macro" observation of life, "apparent" description of the experiential logic summary. On the other hand, chemists also believe that "organic matter" such as urea can only be produced by living organisms under a mysterious "life force."

In 1828, German chemist Friedrich Weiler inadvertently synthesized urea in inorganic experiments, unveiling the "synthetic chemistry" of synthetic organic matter. That is, from the late 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, experimental science based on mathematical, physical and chemical technologies and methods gave birth to cell biology, biochemistry, genetics and developmental biology, which understood the common nature of life. The birth of evolution first elevated human understanding of life to a theoretical level.

In the middle of the 20th century, with the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA and the establishment of the "central law" of molecular biology, human beings began to find the "code book" of life phenomena. The analysis of the primary structure of the biologically active protein bovine insulin, another kind of basic molecule of life, directly led to the complete artificial synthesis of Chinese scientists in the 1960s, that is, the world's first artificial synthesis of proteins. At the same time, the establishment of DNA sequencing technology realized the dream of human "reading genes"; The establishment of DNA recombination technology has realized the dream of "writing genes". Coupled with the realization of the dream of "coding genes" on the basis of gene directed mutation and knockout, molecular biology and genetic engineering technology pushed the life sciences to the peak of the first revolution in history in the 1980s.

By the end of the 20th century, the Human Genome Project brought a second revolution, achieving a comprehensive "interpretation" of the genome, and human understanding of the composition of organisms and the laws of life reached an unprecedented depth of systems biology and the precision of quantitative biology. In 2010, scientists synthesized a mycoplasma genome of about 1 million bases and transferred it into another mycoplasma cell to obtain an "artificial life" that can grow and divide normally, realizing the dream of "writing" the genome. Since then, scientists have synthesized unnatural nucleotides and unnatural amino acids; And using the means of "editing" the genome to create artificial single-chromosome eukaryotic cells... Human beings have mastered the technical means of "reading", "writing" and "compiling" genomes, and acquired the ability to design and synthesize life, and the "vitality" theory that prevailed in the world 200 years ago has been completely overcome.

What is synthetic biology?

What kind of understanding (science) and means (technology) there is what kind of project. In ancient times, testing the medicinal properties of plants by "tasting hundreds of herbs", establishing a system of traditional Chinese medicine, obtaining germplasm resources through artificial domestication and optimization, and establishing animal husbandry and agricultural systems were all typical engineering practices that used the biological understanding and biotechnology at that time to benefit mankind. Today, how to use the knowledge of the "code book" of life and the means of "writing" it to transform nature and benefit mankind? At the beginning of the 21st century, scientists integrated the research concept of engineering science into modern life science, and developed the "convergence" research represented by synthetic biology, which contributed to the third revolution in life science.