Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology

Artificial Intelligence

Cryptography

Materials Science

Neuroscience

Nuclear Technologies

Robotics

Semiconductors

Key Takeaways Cryptography Blockchain

Key Takeaways
Overview
Over The Horizon
People

Technology Focus Areas

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Biotechnology is burgeoning, contributing around 5 percent to the US GDP with a historical doubling time of about seven years.

• Synthetic biology is third-generation biotechnology, complementing domestication and breeding (the first generation) and gene editing (the second generation).

• The United States is struggling to grasp the scale of the bio-opportunity, the strategic ramifications unique to network-enabled biotechnologies, and the possibilities and perils of distributed biomanufacturing.

Overview

Biotechnology creates products or services in partnership with biology. For example, skin microbes can be engineered to combat skin cancer and essential medicines can be brewed from yeast at industrial scales. Biotechnology, already a huge industry—5 percent of GDP— is expected to grow greatly. Synthetic biology, a subset of biotechnology, builds on genetic engineering to focus on improving the composition and functions of living systems. DNA sequencing and synthesis are two fundamental technologies underlying synthetic biology. DNA sequencers are machines that read or decode specific DNA molecules, while synthesizers write user-specified sequences of DNA. The cost of sequencing a human genome has fallen from $10,000 to around $600 in the last decade, while the cost of gene synthesis dropped from $4/base (2003) to $0.04/base (2023).

Key Developments

Synthetic biology has applications in medicine, agriculture, manufacturing, and sustainability. DNA and RNA synthesis underlie 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.

The “superpower” of the internet—the ability to rapidly move information—can amplify the “superpower” of biology: the ability to grow and assemble complex objects locally. For example, DNA sequencers and synthesizers connected to the internet could routinely allow researchers to distribute vaccines against viruses around the world faster than a pandemic can spread. Developed wisely, such capabilities could lead to biodefense and public health systems operating at light speed. Ignored or mismanaged, such capabilities could result in widespread access to bioterror capabilities or worse. Artificial intelligence will likely supercharge synthetic biology, starting with molecular, pathway, and cellular design.

Over the Horizon

For biology to develop fully as a technology, careful attention and sustained support for improving the methods underlying biotechnology overall are essential. Whoever develops the tools for measuring, modeling, and making with biology has a chance of being world leading. Whoever first unlocks routinization and coordination of labor in biotechnology workflows and commercialization will cement their leadership. Careful consideration of such needs and opportunities reveals gaps in the nation’s portfolio (e.g., the National Institute of Standards and Technology should be resourced to develop and advance standards and reference materials undergirding a networked bioeconomy).

The building blocks for a federal strategic vision released in 2022 (including the National Engineering Biology Research and Development Initiative, National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative, National Security Memorandum 15, and National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology) tend to focus on applications and outcomes. Yet each offers important openings for creating support for foundational bioengineering research; these opportunities must be seized via active multilateral efforts to provide advice and input. The recently launched Global Forum on Technology at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) offers an important additional platform for coordination among democracies.

“Patient capital,” both private and public, is crucial for foundational research, since many biotechnologies have long development scales. Such long-term capital must be sustained in times of ebb and flow in the pace of scientific advancement. Although mRNA vaccines came into widespread public knowledge in 2021, their history began thirty years ago, a history that offers humbling lessons regarding lack of vision and support among institutions and programs now happy to claim credit for success.

From a strategic perspective, we are tracking four areas of significant consequence and opportunity:
(1) progress toward constructing life from scratch (e.g., building a cell);
(2) advances in electrobiosynthesis (i.e., growing biomass starting from renewable electricity and atmospheric carbon);
(3) advances in next-generation DNA synthesis, including a potential return to desktop synthesis; and
(4) progress toward profitability (e.g., when synthetic biology companies realize and sustain significant profits).