The life sciences are starting a third revolution. Remember these three key words

In March 2016, Science magazine published a study in which American biologist Craig Venter designed and created a bacterium with only 473 genes, which was considered at the time to be an artificial life with the smallest genome but able to replicate itself, causing a huge sensation.

In this regard, Tang Chao interprets that this work essentially synthesizes the DNA of a bacterium by chemical means, and this DNA is cultured in another bacterial mother, and another bacterium reads this DNA and becomes the first bacterium, which is technically a progress, but it cannot be considered as synthesizing a new life, but "transplanting a new life."

Ouyangqi, who does biology research at Peking University's School of Physics, commented that it could be argued that Venter's team "copied" life. After they sequenced one bacterium, they synthesized its DNA using a synthetic technique and put it into another bacterium, which grew up following the genetic code of the first bacterium. "In fact, in this process, you don't understand the mechanism... The question is, can you copy it and change it? Can you transform it with purpose? That's actually the key to synthetic biology."

Ouyang Qi also pointed out that synthetic biology has two main tasks, from the basic research level, to understand as much as possible what the quantitative laws of synthetic life are; From the application level, according to the existing knowledge, it is not possible to solve the problem of prediction, that is, what can be designed, "there are still many basic problems to be solved."

Li Dong agreed with Ouyang Qi's view. Designing life from the ground up, he says, is certainly the goal of human endeavor, but it is true that we are far from that goal.

Current synthetic biology, he explained, introduces the concepts of molecular biology, genomics, and engineering to make living things programmable, as well as to have large reserves of knowledge and data as drivers. However, due to our current limited understanding of life, even a single cell or a organism such as a bacterium, without a thorough understanding of its operating logic, it is impossible to design a complete life from scratch.

"Right now, if we're going to design a whole new cell, I don't think it's possible. Even now, it's very, very difficult to design just one chromosome, put it into an existing cell, and get it through mitosis." Li Dong said.

Li Dong said that in order to truly design life from scratch, there is still a lot of basic research work to be done, such as the development of new observational methods or analytical techniques that can allow us to reveal the entire life process in a panoramic manner, "which should be said that the road to synthetic biology must be crossed."

"The life sciences may not just be a field of their own, but may integrate tools like artificial intelligence, engineering, and other physics to really deconstruct life." After deconstruction, I felt that it was possible to do real synthesis and building knowledge." Li Dong said.

Although all three scholars agree that synthetic biology is still solving some basic problems and is far from truly designing life, they also talk about the need to consider the relevant ethical issues in the development of science and technology in order to prevent the destruction of technology on human beings.

"When human beings use new technologies to change human society, human society has evolved to today, and even nature has evolved to today, perhaps with a little reverence." Some things should not be too hasty, otherwise the consequences may not be something we can deal with." Li Dong said that to promote the application of technology, we need to make two preparations, not only to see its advantages, but also to see the disadvantages. For example, "When you don't fully understand the brain, once you make the brain-computer interface really can control something, etc., I think it may be possible to do some experiments at the laboratory stage, but you must be cautious about promoting it." In this way, we can achieve a more balanced development process with the existing human society or the natural world."

Tang Chao introduced that in the field of gene editing, it is strictly prohibited to edit human germ cells is a red line drawn by the scientific community, which is because artificially changing the genes of germ cells, the changed genes will also be inherited to the next generation, and affect the entire human gene pool.

Li also mentioned that many of the current concerns are likely that technological progress is not good enough, the scientific community does not understand the technology thoroughly enough, so more basic research on life itself is needed. However, technological progress is also iterative, and it may be possible to overcome existing concerns by "iterating on safer or more efficient versions."

03 What does the Third Life Science Revolution mean?

Tang Chao, who is familiar with the history of contemporary science and technology, believes that mankind will usher in the third life science revolution. The first life science revolution began in the 1950s. This revolution brought a large number of physical and chemical tools and ideas to the life sciences in methods such as X-rays, nuclear magnetic resonance, electron microscopy, etc. Its signature achievement was the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA using X-rays. The second life science revolution began in the 1990s with genomics, the intersection of mathematics and computer science with the life sciences. The third life science revolution is beginning, based on technological progress and comprehensive interdisciplinary integration, "This life science revolution will not only bring opportunities and challenges to the development of life science itself, but also to the development of other quantitative disciplines." [1]