Writing DNA: First Synthetic Biology Conference Held at MIT
by Lauren Clark

"We're going to be able to write DNA. What do we want to say?"

Drew Endy, MIT Assistant Professor of Biological Engineering, asked this question as he introduced the First International Meeting on Synthetic Biology. The conference, "Synthetic Biology 1.0," took place at MIT June 10-12, 2004.

Characterized as "the first conference of its type, anywhere" by Thomas F. Knight, Jr., senior research scientist in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), it brought together researchers from around the world — from biologists to computer scientists — who are involved in the field of synthetic biology.

Simply put, synthetic biology means "leveraging natural structures as ways of building things on the molecular scale," said Knight. He, along with Endy and CSAIL colleague Randy Rettberg, represented MIT among two dozen speakers from several academic institutions.

The purpose of Synthetic Biology 1.0 was to ignite the formation of a tight-knit, cooperative community of researchers that can tackle the scope and complexity of synthetic biology's challenges and consider potential misguided applications of future biological technology.

Even though work in synthetic biology has progressed for two decades, researchers are only at the preliminary stages of being able to engineer biological systems, said Endy. He compared synthetic biology today to mechanical engineering in the 1800s, when machine components had yet to be standardized. Thanks to the eventual completion of that process, "we no longer have to think about the direction of the threading on a screw," said Endy. Similarly, biological engineers at MIT and elsewhere are working to standardize biological "parts," such as ribosomes and other cell components.

In a talk titled "Biological Simplicity," Knight used Legos to demonstrate the usefulness of standardized parts. "You can put them together however you want. Can we construct a chromosome from standardized parts?" He then held up a silicon chip. A former silicon designer, Knight said he takes the tools he used to control the complexity of a 100 million- to 1 billion-component silicon chip and applies them to biological systems. He pointed out that while biologists celebrate the "wonderful complexity" of biological systems, "engineers cherish the simplicity of systems."

He is working on rewriting the genome of a microorganism called mesoplasma. One way to do this, he said, is to "take stuff out until it breaks. An alternative to understanding complexity is to remove it." While these remarks got laughs, Knight's point was that his approach "complements rather than replaces standard approaches. It could lead to new science and novel engineering."

"If you can write DNA, you're no longer limited to what is but to what you could make," said Endy. "The science you get out of that is more than 'Here's this gene and what it does.' It's 'What are the physical limitations of biological systems?'"

Knight, Endy, and Rettberg discussed MIT's efforts toward writing DNA in "Parts, Devices and Systems: Engineering Biology at MIT." Endy said that he and his colleagues want to "put in place the technical infrastructure to make routine the design and fabrication of many-component, integrated biological systems.

"We're running into an engineering challenge, one as big as we've ever encountered."

Endy thinks MIT is an ideal place to tackle that challenge. A former student of civil and environmental engineering, Endy turned to biochemical engineering as a PhD candidate at Dartmouth before coming to MIT in 2002.

"I knew this was where I wanted to be — a place that thinks of biology as a technology," he said.

One advantage of researching synthetic biology at MIT, he said, is that "there is a nice mix of people here who have deep knowledge of engineering theory and processes. There are people here who remember when engineering fields weren't established. They can apply the experiences of the past to this new field."

Synthetic Biology 1.0 was a step in that shaping process. "There was a sense that this was the beginning of something that could be important," Knight said of the conference. "There've been many people doing this for a long time. It's good to realize we all exist and that there's a set of shared goals."