Regenesis
Authors: George M. Church
REGENESIS
REGENESIS
How Synthetic Biology Will
Reinvent Nature and Ourselves
BASIC BOOKS
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
NEW YORK
Copyright © 2012 by George Church and Ed Regis
Published by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
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A grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation supported the research and writing of this book.
Designed by Timm Bryson
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Church, George M. (George McDonald)
Regenesis : how synthetic biology will reinvent nature and ourselves / George M. Church and Ed Regis. â 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-465-03329-4 (e-book) 1. Synthetic biology. 2. GenomicsâSocial aspects. 3. GeneticsâSocial aspects. 4. Nature. 5. Bioengineering. I. Regis, Edward, 1944- II. Title.
QH438.7.C486 2012
572.8'6âdc23
2012013274
10Â Â 9Â Â 8Â Â 7Â Â 6Â Â 5Â Â 4Â Â 3Â Â 2Â Â 1
GEORGE CHURCH
dedicates this book to his family and to his colleagues
who have been so very supportive of technology
development and regenerative biology
.
ED REGIS
dedicates this book to his wife
,
Pamela Regis
.
CONTENTS
F
ROM
B
IOPLASTICS TO
H.
SAPIENS
2.0
At the Inorganic/Organic Interface
Reading the Most Ancient Texts and
the Future of Living Software
The Mirror World and the Explosion of Diversity.
How Fast Can Evolution Go and How Diverse Can It Be?
“The Best Substitute for Petroleum Is Petroleum”
Emergence of Mammalian Immune System. Solving the
Health Care Crisis Through Genome Engineering
Industrial Revolutions. The Agricultural Revolution and
Synthetic Genomics. The BioFab Manifesto
The Third Industrial Revolution. iGEM
From Personal Genomes to Immortal Human Components
+ 1
YR
, T
HE
E
ND OF THE
B
EGINNING
,
T
RANSHUMANISM, AND THE
P
ANSPERMIA
E
RA
Societal Risks and Countermeasures
Notes: On Encoding This Book into DNA
F
ROM
B
IOPLASTICS TO
H.
SAPIENS
2.0
In December 2009, patrons of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, experienced a mild jolt of biological future shock when their pre-performance and intermission drinksâtheir beers, wines, and sodasâwere served to them in a new type of clear plastic cup. The cups looked exactly like any other transparent plastic cup produced from petrochemicals, except for a single telling difference: each one bore the legend, “Plastic made 100% from plants.”
Plants?
Indeed. The plastic, known as Mirel, was the product of a joint venture between Metabolix, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, bioengineering firm, and Archer Daniels Midland, the giant food processing company that had recently constructed a bioplastics production plant in Clinton, Iowa. The plant had been designed to churn out Mirel at the rate of 110 million pounds per year.
Chemically, Mirel was a substance known as polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB), which was normally made from the hydrocarbons found in petroleum. But starting in the early 1990s, Oliver Peoples, a molecular biologist
who was a cofounder of Metabolix, began looking for ways to produce polymers like PHB by fermentation, by the action of genetically altered microbes on a feedstock mixture.
After seventeen years of research and experimentation (and having been laughed out the doors of several chemical companies), Peoples had developed an industrial strain of a proprietary microbe that turned corn sugar into the PHB plastic polymer. In its broadest outlines, the process was not all that different from brewing beer, which was also accomplished by fermentation: microorganisms (yeast cells) acted on malt and hops to produce ethanol. In the case of Mirel, the microbial fermentation system consisted of a large vat that combined the engineered microbes with corn sugar and other biochemical herbs and spices. The microbes metabolized the corn sugar and turned it into bioplastic, which was then separated from the organisms and formed into pellets of Mirel. Ethanol was a chemical, and so was PHB, but in both cases microbes effected the transformation of organic raw material into a wholly different kind of finished product.
The microbial-based PHB had some key environmental advantages over the petrochemical-derived version. For one thing, since it wasn't made from petroleum, it lessened our dependence on fossil fuels. For another, its chief feedstock material, corn, was an agriculturally renewable and sustainable resource, not something we were going to run out of any time soon. For a third, Mirel bioplastic resins were the only nonstarch bioplastics certified by Vinçotte, an independent inspection and certification organization, for biodegradability in natural soil and water environments, such as seawater. If any of the plastic cups used at the Kennedy Center ended up in the Potomac River, they would break down and be gone forever in a matter of months. (Biodegradation is not necessarily the panacea it was once thought to be, since it releases greenhouse gases, while non-degradation, ironically, sequesters carbon.)
Constructing a microbe that would convert corn into plastic, in a process akin to beer brewing, was just one example of the transformations made possible by the emerging discipline of synthetic biologyâthe science of selectively altering the genes of organisms to make them do things that they wouldn't do in their original, natural, untouched state.
But the feat of turning corn into plastic was merely the tip of the synthetic biology iceberg. By the first decade of the twenty-first century microbe-made commodities were yielding up products that nobody would have guessed were manufactured by bacteria in three-story-high industrial vats. Carpet fibers, for example.
In 2005 Mohawk Industries introduced its new SmartStrand carpet line. It was based on the DuPont fiber Sorona, which was made out of “naturally occurring sugars from readily available and renewable crops.” The Sorona fiber had a unique, semicrystalline molecular structure that made it especially suitable for clothing, automobile upholstery, and carpets. The fiber had a pronounced kink in the middle, and the shape acted as a molecular spring, allowing the strands to stretch or deform and then automatically snap back into their original shape. That attribute was perfect for preventing baggy knees or elbows, or for making carpets that were highly resilient, comfortable, and supportive.
Sorona's main ingredient was a chemical known as 1,3-propanediol (PDO), which was classically derived from petrochemicals and other ingredients that included ether, rhodium, cobalt, and nickel. In 1995 DuPont had teamed up with Genencor International, a genetic engineering firm with principal offices in Palo Alto, to research the possibility of producing PDO biologically. Scientists from the two companies took DNA from three different microorganisms and stitched them together in a way that resulted in a new industrial strain of the bacterium
Escherichia coli
. Specifically, they programmed twenty-six genetic changes into the microbe enabling it to convert glucose from corn directly into PDO in a fermenter vat, like beer and Mirel.