observations from the National Academies meeting on synbio

I attended a recent Washington, D.C. meeting on Opportunities and Challenges in the Emerging Field of Synthetic Biology, co-hosted by the National Academies, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Royal Society. The meeting brought together an international cast of scientists, policymakers, and social scientists to discuss the technical and social barriers to achieving the promise of this emerging field. Presentations, audio and transcripts from the meeting are available on the National Academies website. SynBERC investigators Drew Endy and Paul Rabinow were featured speakers, and here are two representative quotes from them:

"The question of what constitutes a good life today, and the contribution of the bio-sciences to that form of life, must be vigilantly posed and re-posed." – Paul Rabinow

"Today, each biotechnology project requires a Hercules." – Drew Endy

Here are four of several recurring themes I observed during the conference:

1. Funding agencies and universities tend to reward application-based projects over engineering projects. This leads to novel systems, but it provides little incentive for researchers to develop the engineering infrastructure needed to make biology easier to engineer for future generations.

2. Today’s intellectual property environment threatens to stifle creativity and retard economic gains. New practices and models for protecting IP while allowing others to build on it are necessary for synthetic biology to achieve the ambitious promise envisioned its practitioners.

3. The synbio community needs to come together to solve the technical problems of standardization. It is a huge task.

4. The synbio community has done a good job of trying to engage citizens about the challenges and opportunities of the field, but it can and must do better. Citizens don’t need to have a PhD to make intelligent judgments about science. New, more democratic forms of communication can help us overcome traditional boundaries to citizen participation in science and technology policy.