Team:British Columbia/Wild

This was one of our favourite responses when we surveyed hundreds of undergraduate students for their definition of “Synthetic Biology”. When people think of synthetic biology, do they imagine something unnatural, belonging to a different time, a beautiful and marvellous human achievement but dangerous to the world as we know it? Is synthetic biology a futuristic dinosaur that needs to be isolated on an island?

Synthetic biologists have very grand visions of what their creations can do. We want organisms that can clean up oil spills and non‐biodegradable garbage, fix the ozone layer, fertilize barren land and purify contaminated water, synthesize copious amounts of bio‐fuels and other compounds at low cost, valiantly beat down untreatable illnesses, and encode yotta‐bytes of encrypted data. These organisms must not only perform these functions infallibly, but also adhere strictly to bio‐safety and bio‐security restrictions. We want them to do what they are supposed to do and stay where they are supposed to stay.

While these expectations may be realizable in laboratory or industrial settings, it becomes exceedingly difficult to design, model and validate synthetic organisms intended for release into open spaces such as nature or the human environment. So our questions are (i) Will synthetic organisms ever be released into the open? (2) What extent of pre‐emptive measures is required before this can happen? (3) Does everyone need to agree? Investors, consumers, environmentalists, governments, communities, educators, scientists, churches and the marginalized? The informed and the uninformed?

Our short discourse "Synthetic Biology in the Open: Pipe dream or the next giant leap for mankind?" can be downloaded or found on this CommunityBricks page.

To grasp the attitudes toward releasing synthetic biology in the wild, we contacted and interviewed experts in various fields. Here are the 5 core questions we asked:

1. Do you think synthetic organisms should be released into the wild?

2. What standards would you recommend for their release?

3. What challenges are there in terms of attaining public acceptance?

4. What future directions do you see for synthetic biology?

5. Do you think we should be messing with organisms? Rewriting the code of life?