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NASA
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While advances in biosciences and biotechnology will no doubt transform the world in this “century of biology,” Synthetic Biology in particular holds the potential for rapid, game-changing advances, since it liberates humanity from the slow creep of natural evolution. This is particularly relevant to NASA’s long-term exploration missions, which will require biological systems and ecosystems to be sustained in extraterrestrial environments. Biological systems that have evolved in terrestrial environments are generally not well suited to extraterrestrial environments, and the time required for evolutionary adaptation is far too great. NASA’s solution has been to sustain life in space by engineering suitable environments. Advances in Synthetic Biology will provide complementary capability to engineer biological systems better suited to extraterrestrial environments. | While advances in biosciences and biotechnology will no doubt transform the world in this “century of biology,” Synthetic Biology in particular holds the potential for rapid, game-changing advances, since it liberates humanity from the slow creep of natural evolution. This is particularly relevant to NASA’s long-term exploration missions, which will require biological systems and ecosystems to be sustained in extraterrestrial environments. Biological systems that have evolved in terrestrial environments are generally not well suited to extraterrestrial environments, and the time required for evolutionary adaptation is far too great. NASA’s solution has been to sustain life in space by engineering suitable environments. Advances in Synthetic Biology will provide complementary capability to engineer biological systems better suited to extraterrestrial environments. | ||
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'''As a participant in iGEM, we hope you will consider exploring projects related to space technology needs, including:''' | '''As a participant in iGEM, we hope you will consider exploring projects related to space technology needs, including:''' | ||
Revision as of 19:04, 16 March 2011
Space Synthetic Biology – a Tool for Space Science and Exploration
NASA's mission is broadly defined: "to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research". Synthetic Biology will one day provide more efficient, lower cost, practical approaches to specific challenges in space. NASA programs can derive significant benefits by utilizing this emerging field to create advances for biological life support and in-situ resource utilization, for radiation and gravitational biology countermeasures, for advanced sensing, advanced materials, and for research in the origins and evolution of life.
The NASA Space Synthetic Biology Project is designed to harness biology in reliable, robust, engineered systems to support NASA’s exploration and science missions, to improve life on Earth, and to help shape NASA’s future. The project is also intended to contribute foundational tools to the synthetic biology community. It is led by the NASA Ames Research Center. See our website at http://syntheticbiology.arc.nasa.gov/.
While advances in biosciences and biotechnology will no doubt transform the world in this “century of biology,” Synthetic Biology in particular holds the potential for rapid, game-changing advances, since it liberates humanity from the slow creep of natural evolution. This is particularly relevant to NASA’s long-term exploration missions, which will require biological systems and ecosystems to be sustained in extraterrestrial environments. Biological systems that have evolved in terrestrial environments are generally not well suited to extraterrestrial environments, and the time required for evolutionary adaptation is far too great. NASA’s solution has been to sustain life in space by engineering suitable environments. Advances in Synthetic Biology will provide complementary capability to engineer biological systems better suited to extraterrestrial environments.
As a participant in iGEM, we hope you will consider exploring projects related to space technology needs, including:
Links to past iGEM projects specifically related to space applications:
Links to past iGEM projects with relevance to space applications:
We identified these prior iGEM projects as representative examples, but certainly they are not the only ones relevant to space science and exploration – We hope you will identify new innovative concepts and continue to build on the iGEM legacy to support Space Synthetic Biology.
Selected publications and reviews:
