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Kingkini Roychoudhury
Kingkini Roychoudhury
BS-MS Second Year
BS-MS Second Year
Synthetic Biology has the name ‘biology’ in it, and therefore, in a country where streams are divided from a young age, and where science students are staunchly classified into ‘bio’ and ‘non-bio’ students, this usage might seem utterly misleading. So let me tell you : the field of Synthetic Biology, might be based in biology but is, in no way, restricted to it. This field has vast applications for physics, chemistry, engineering, computation and AI - an interdisciplinary field in its true sense! And through this article, maybe you’ll get to know how accurate this is.
Suppose you’re a mechanical engineer trying to update the design of a machine to make it perform a specific function. You would have to create a plan, check which parts are already there and what they do, collect other tools and spare parts and then start putting it all together. Synthetic biology also works in the exact same way, only that it relates to live cells and organisms. Already present biological pathways and naturally produced proteins or cell products are taken to be similar to an existing machine. If you want to improve this, or add new functions, you need to perform certain tweaks to it to get your desired effect. This is done by editing gene sequences - in order to get a new protein product that will help us achieve whatever new function we want the biological system to perform. So the basic principle behind it is actually exactly the same as engineering.
However, since you’re tweaking an already functioning system, which in itself, has so many complex interactions, adding something new might have off-target, undesired effects. To analyse those, or to design a molecule that can minimise these effects, you need a veritable knowledge of the chemistry of the newly inserted molecule. You need to know how it might be affected by the different concentrations of pH and other chemical factors present inside the cell. Especially in designing a drug molecule using synthetic biology methods, you need to be very careful about what other effects it might produce, or whether it remains viable inside the cell. So, this brings in the concepts of biochemistry, for you.
Following a similar line of thought, if you want to check the off-target effects and viability of a synthetically inserted protein or molecule, there exist several computational methods to do that too! The processes of ‘Molecular Dynamic Simulations’ (MDS) hugely simplify and hasten synthetic biology studies as they give a sufficiently clear picture of how a molecule might behave or interact in the presence of some reagents, at different time frames. As you can probably understand from the name, MDS involves actually simulating the molecules and its surroundings on a computer and then performing calculations for motion and particle interactions on a molecular level. Operating such software and doing these simulations involves some basic understanding of coding, too. And it's not just an inconsequential aspect! MDS and other similar computational methods form a very integral part of synthetic biology experiments, termed as modelling or dry-lab experiments and are always beneficial if performed before actual laboratory work.
In case that wasn’t enough ‘interdisciplinary’ for you, guess what? There’s more!
Synthetic Biology has made possible the creation of systems like biological computers and biosensors. Biological computers are engineered organisms that can perform computer-like operations. Scientists have identified and applied several logic gates within the cells that makes it possible to do analog as well as digital computing in living cells. Biosensors, on the other hand, act as sensors for the presence of certain chemicals in its environment and employ several physicochemical interactions such as piezoelectricity, electrochemiluminescence, and so on, to give a readable output. These engineered cells have even had a huge impact on healthcare, environmental research, and so much more.
These were all certain examples of how all these other fields and scientific disciplines have merged and enhanced synthetic biology to make it the all-encompassing field that it is today. There are many more areas where expertise on many different disciplines is required to create something new for the betterment of society.
A few of the wonders Synbio can achieve!
Source : bsd555, ADOBESTOCKSo, to the person reading this - whether you’re a student with a more computational background who looks at Synthetic ‘biology’ thinking, “Well, what has this rubbish got to do with me?” ; or you’re just a confused soul struggling to choose any one stream to go for - I hope this article has convinced you that synthetic biology is a truly inclusive field and it has tremendous scope for everyone, no matter which background you’re from.
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