Chapter 8. The Present and Bright Future of Synthetic Biology
Thus it was that, through the succession of his creatures, the Star Maker advanced from stage to stage in the progress from infantile to mature divinity.
Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker
I’m here to talk about the present and the bright future of synthetic biology. As a hacker, serial entrepreneur, and transhumanist, I have in recent years been following and working with exponential technologies that are merging, such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, synthetic biology, and software.
We are seeing a growing ecosystem of computational tools, biological techniques, languages, and platforms to program synthetic biology in an easy way. Tools such as Antha, SBOL, Clotho, Eugene, Merlin, Genome Compiler, DNA 2.0 Gene Designer, MAGE, and Benchling are allowing researchers to be more efficient and productive.
As a software developer, I compare these tools to the low-level platforms that allowed us to code the firmware and bootloaders of the first computer hardware. But we’re using ACTGs and living machines instead of assembly and silicon chips. Some companies like Autodesk want to go one step further, adding a layer of high-level abstraction to the task of engineering synthetic biology, through its new Cyborg platform. Even Microsoft is contributing to the synthetic biology community with a set of tools, languages, and compilers.
Unfortunately, we still don’t have ready-to-go “bio Arduinos” in synthetic biology. ...
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