In May 2022, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for Bioeconomic Development", proposing that during the "14th Five-Year Plan", we should promote the integration of biotechnology and information technology, accelerate the development of industries such as biomedicine, biobreeding, biomaterials, and bioenergy to make the bioeconomy bigger and stronger. Synthetic biology has highly integrated technologies and solutions in many fields such as biotechnology, genetic engineering, molecular engineering, and systems biology with engineering ideas, and has spawned many new business formats and huge market opportunities.
According to McKinsey's forecast, 60% of the physical investment in global economic activities can be obtained using biotechnology production, of which 1/3 are natural biological materials and 2/3 are replaceable non-biological materials; from 2030 to 2040, synthetic biology will bring direct economic benefits of US$2-4 trillion to the world every year.
Synthetic Biology, this cutting-edge complex discipline, may reshape the production methods of most materials in the world, reshape the operating forms of the economy and industries, reshape people's lives, and bring extremely considerable economic benefits. The industrial application of synthetic biology is gradually being explored, and many fields such as fermentation engineering, medical and health, green energy, agriculture and food may be expected to usher in the final touch in the near future.
How synthetic biology changes the world
If the essence of human development is the utilization and transformation of the natural environment, then biological resources can be said to be the largest subject in the natural environment and the greatest treasure for us to seek future development. In ancient times, eating raw meat and drinking blood to fill the belly, drilling wood to make fire to survive; ten thousand years later, ancient agriculture developed rapidly, and Chinese herbal medicines were discovered, antibiotics were used, and space radiation breeding was used. Petroleum and coal became the cornerstones of the modern energy and chemical industry... Human beings directly or indirectly use biological resources, and then continuously transformed them to make organisms more in line with human development needs.
wild bananas and wild corn[1]
The fruits and grains we eat have been cultivated for thousands of years, and their appearance has changed drastically since the beginning. For example, penicillin, after continuous breeding, its yield has increased by 2500 times compared with the initial 40 units/ml, from price-to-value gold to widely used in clinical practice. The transformation of organisms in the past has achieved great achievements, but these transformations are often gradual and isolated, limited to enhancing biological products, but lack the creation of organisms with new functions.
Synthetic Biology is perhaps the most effective way to solve this huge pain point. Synthetic biology is not a milestone new technology, but a new field of highly cross-fusion. It integrates technical methods in multiple fields such as biotechnology, genetic engineering, molecular engineering, and systems biology, and integrates the standardization, decoupling and modular ideas of engineering into biological transformation, and continuously makes breakthroughs in existing technologies in many fields.
The common misunderstanding of synthetic biology is to equate it with biosynthesis or fermentation engineering. As the name suggests, synthetic biology is to synthesize organisms, and biosynthesis is to synthesize other substances using organisms. Therefore, synthetic biology is more to provide customized organisms for biosynthesis or fermentation engineering. The goal of synthetic biology is to "customize" the target products of synthetic biological components, organisms, biological systems, etc. and standardize their processes.
Two ways to synthesize organisms [2]
Generally speaking, there are two ways to synthesize organisms, Top-Down (top-down) and Bottom-Up (bottom-up). The former introduces new functions into existing cells, while the latter directly creates new biological components and forms a more complex biological system by building components until artificial cells and artificial multicellular life forms are created. The standardization of the synthesis process is similar to the arrangement and combination of building blocks. Use engineering ideas to design biological components with specific functions, supplemented by DNA synthesis, DNA assembly, gene editing and other technical means to jointly complete the customized synthesis of a set of biological systems.
In terms of different levels of synthesis, synthetic biology can be divided into molecular level, subcellular level, cell level, tissue level and even above levels. Molecular-level synthesis is the basis for transforming all organisms, while cell-level synthesis directly provides materials for current applications in various fields such as fermentation (chassis cell transformation), medicine (various immune cell therapies, oncolytic viruses).
The most widely used method at the molecular level is to synthesize oligonucleotide , peptides, and even the entire gene through biochemical means. At the subcellular level, the main research on artificial organelles is carried out, such as artificial synthesis of chloroplast , mitochondrial , and chromosomes to achieve specific functions. The most popular thing at present is cell-level synthesis. By modifying cells, specific substances such as long-chain dibasic acid , squalene , farnesene, etc. can also build special functions based on the existing basis of cells or viruses. The most representative technology is to modify immune cell , and add chimeric antigen structures to immune cells to form Car-T technology with stronger tumor recognition capabilities. As for organization and above levels, synthesis technology is still in the research stage, and the research directions include bioprinting technology, artificial tissue formation based on scaffolds, etc. Organoids are the direction of rapid research progress. In layman's terms, it is to build an organ environment similar to the body in the patient's body, form a "superman" for the affected organs, and give targeted medication on the "superman", so as to screen the agent more accurately and determine the dose, and finally transfer it to the patient to complete the actual treatment.
or above, we have initially unveiled the mystery of synthetic biology. We tend to call synthetic biology a "new path" with huge energy. The application scope of its standardized customized synthesis model is far from limited to the manufacturing of specific substances, but it has widely reached multiple industries such as medical, energy, agriculture, and the environment. Synthetic biology is not only the key to opening up a new economic and industrial pattern in the future, but also a brush to reshape people's new future life.
Intersectional relationship between synthetic biology and some disciplines
Synthetic biology is the "catalyst" for the upgrading of fermentation engineering
Among the many application fields of synthetic biology, fermentation engineering is currently the most mainstream and most concerned field. Fermentation is the earliest typical case of human use of microorganism . Modern products are produced by fermentation engineering, including traditional products such as alcohol and acetic acid, pharmaceutical products such as insulin, interferon, growth hormone, antibiotics and vaccines, agricultural products such as pesticides, fermentation fertilizers, biological herbicides, chemical products such as amino acids, fragrances, enzymes, vitamins, various protein and other biopolymers, etc. The application of
synthetic biology in fermentation engineering is mainly to produce target products such as vitamins, amino acids, polymer materials, etc. by using organisms, or to provide strains that meet specific conditions and meet specific functions for biosynthesis, biofermentation , etc., and finally complete synthesis by consuming organisms. According to McKinsey (McKinsey, Global Management Consulting Company), about 70% of the materials currently used by humans can be produced through fermentation engineering, and using organisms created by synthetic biology as raw materials can greatly enhance the speed and quality of fermentation engineering. The core technical issue of the application of
Synthetic biology in fermentation engineering is the control of metabolic pathways. If certain genes of the target product are not suitable for large-scale cultivation, we can introduce them into easy-to-cultivate chassis cells, and then replace large farms, farms and microbial incubators that require special conditions with general, energy-efficient, environmentally friendly microbial fermentation plants. This type of operation is called heterologous expression by natural synthesis pathways in culture-friendly organisms.
To achieve fine manipulation of the metabolic pathway, further precise dynamic adjustment of the metabolic pathway chain is needed to make the activity and expression of various enzymes and intermediates in the pathway exactly equal to the optimal metabolic flux, thereby avoiding insufficient or excessive accumulation of enzymes and intermediates affecting the output of the final product. In addition, it is also necessary to switch the genetic circuits designed by synthetic biology under specific time and environmental conditions to convert different gene circuits into metabolic pathways under appropriate conditions to achieve a dynamic balance of bacterial growth and production and maximize production efficiency.
Synthetic biology can also add various functions to fermentation engineering to reduce cultivation requirements and costs and strengthen metabolic capabilities. For example, in aerobic culture, we can increase the relevant proteins expressing oxygen transport in the chassis cells, so that the cells have stronger ability to obtain oxygen, improve culture density, and reduce the need for the culture environment. The application of
Synthetic biology in fermentation engineering can be summarized as "upgrading", and is often used to produce materials that have formed a certain market pattern through new biological metabolic pathways.
Take the production of paclitaxel as an example. Paclitaxel is extracted from plant bark tissue of the genus Yew and is the first chemotherapy drug extracted from natural plants. Its publication is known as one of the three major achievements of international anti-cancer drugs in the 1990s. Paclitaxel is still one of the common drugs in tumor chemotherapy treatment. It can inhibit microtubule depolymerization by stabilizing and enhancing the polymerization ability of tubulin , thereby inhibiting cell mitosis, and assisting in achieving chemotherapy effects.
European yew/SiGarb, published on Wikimedia Commons
The main source of paclitaxel is yew, but the growth cycle of natural yew is as long as 100-250 years, and it also takes 15-20 years for the yew to be grown alone. In the bark of yew, the content of paclitaxel is only one-tenth to six-tenth. Cutting down a natural yew can only extract less than 1 gram of paclitaxel.
1990, the per capita GDP in China was about 1,700 yuan, but the maximum price of 1 gram of paclitaxel has reached US$2,000. Faced with such expensive costs, patients are unable to afford it, and the phenomenon of digging yew is rampant. Yunnan Province owns 80% of China and 50% of the world's wild yew. A sample survey conducted by the Yunnan Forest Public Security Bureau in 2002 showed that 92.5% of yew was peeled or cut, and Yunnan yew suffered devastating damage. Therefore, scientists have been constantly exploring ways to artificially produce paclitaxel. The chemical synthesis/semi-synthetic pathways have been opened earlier, but they cannot be commercialized due to many steps and low yields, and it is still difficult to get rid of their dependence on yew resources. But now, it has become possible to save tumor patients and wild yew through the continuous development and iteration of synthetic biology technologies.
initially synthesized biology was to produce paclitaxel by directly culturing yew cells on a large scale. Although this method greatly reduces the use of space, there are still various problems. For example, the growth rate of yew cells is slow, the toxicity of paclitaxel to cells will curb cell mitosis, and the browning phenomenon is difficult to overcome. Therefore, this tissue culture solution is difficult to achieve large-scale industrialization. Therefore, finding a chassis cell that grows faster and is more resistant to paclitaxel, and transfer the metabolic pathway of heterologous paclitaxel into the chassis cells has become a new research hotspot. The metabolic pathway of
paclitaxel is a complex metabolic network, not a simple linear pathway. Its metabolism requires three parts of reaction, each part of which is very complex, and the mechanism of the second part has not yet been clarified. Research on P450 hydroxylase, which may involve multiple metabolic pathways, is still to be developed. Even though there are still many difficulties, with the help of synthetic biology, scientists have been able to produce precursor substances of paclitaxel through biological materials such as E. coli or yeast . Such precursor substances can be combined into paclitaxel molecules during biosynthesis, thereby greatly increasing the yield of paclitaxel.Taxdiene is currently the paclitaxel precursor substance with higher yields. Its yield can reach 1g/L, and the yield of more natural extraction has achieved great progress. Based on the time period, paclitaxel produced by synthetic biology usually has a fermentation cycle of less than one month. That is to say, the paclitaxel obtained by the treatment of a 1L culture tank is equivalent to the extraction amount of a yew tree in 15-20 years.
Although the synthetic biology has not mastered the metabolism of paclitaxel, and has not yet bypassed the precursor substances to directly produce paclitaxel in one step, even if the price level factors are not taken into account, the price of paclitaxel has dropped from a maximum of US$2,000 per gram in the early 1990s to about RMB 300 per gram today. The application of synthetic biology in paclitaxel production has enabled more patients to enjoy better medicines and has gradually recovered the plant population of yew.
It can be seen that synthetic biology can amplify the advantages of biological metabolism, make the production process more efficient and environmentally friendly, and obtain lower production costs and environmental costs, forming a greater market competitive advantage. For enterprises, having biotransformation technology that can be highly integrated with the large-scale production process will become the key to establishing and consolidating core competitive advantages. The target products selected by the enterprise and the existing market structure will also become an important factor affecting the development of the enterprise.
Synthetic Biology Comprehensive Optimization of the Medical Industry
Medical Industry Development highly relies on the research and development breakthroughs of new technologies. Among them, biomaterial research has high requirements for biocompatibility , that is, it is necessary to enable appropriate reactions in special parts of the body after entering biological tissue , and the two cycle until they reach a specific goal. Comparing the underlying logic of synthetic biology, it can be seen that biocompatibility is an important research topic that is highly consistent with it. The application of
Synthetic biology in medicine mainly includes three aspects, namely medical prevention, diagnosis and treatment.
In terms of medical prevention, synthetic biology mainly plays a role by optimizing vaccines or providing nucleic acid vaccines. Compared with the inactivated vaccine , live attenuated vaccines have a longer effect and stronger immunity. They have become the simplest and most effective long-acting vaccine for some infectious diseases, but most infectious diseases have not yet developed mature low-toxic vaccines. The codon optimization technology of synthetic biology can negatively optimize the viral genome, such as resetting the viral genome through large-scale synonyms mutations, reducing the viral toxicity without understanding the virus function, and rapidly generating attenuated strains. This technology has been used in the Phase I clinical trials of some vaccines, including CodaVax-H1N (absilient vaccine for influenza A), CodaVax-RSV (anti-reactive vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus), CDX-005 (SARS-CoV-2 deactivated vaccine), etc.
In addition to optimizing deactivated vaccines, synthetic biology is also the basis for the manufacture of DNA and RNA vaccines. Synthetic biology can directly synthesize nucleic acid molecules using related technologies, introduce DNA or RNA encoding virus components into human cells through vaccines, and then realize the same viral antigen-induced cells to and humoral immunity processes as natural infection. This vaccine manufacturing method has the advantages of fast design speed, simple production process and wide range of selectable targets, which can provide greater space for vaccine research and development; at the same time, its immune response is strong and can improve the effectiveness of disease prevention. In terms of medical diagnosis, biosynthesis technology is used to design biological components with specific molecular interactions, which can achieve real-time, efficient, highly sensitive, and highly specific non-invasive detection. Its scope of application covers cancer cells, metabolites, infectious factors, toxins, etc. This solution has promoted preclinical research in some non-infectious cancers, coronary artery diseases, infectious diseases (such as Ebola , Zika, tuberculosis , malaria , AIDS, novel coronavirus pneumonia, etc.) and other diagnoses (such as blood regular analysis, etc.).
The design idea of this detection method can be summarized as building sensors, processors and reporters. sensor is responsible for sensing target signals in the internal or external environment, and the processor is responsible for classifying the signals collected by the sensor into clinical types according to medical standards, and finally outputs the analysis results in an easy-to-test form by the reporter. In addition to building new structures, synthetic biology can also provide better performance raw materials (such as enzymes) for existing in vitro diagnostic programs through the directional transformation technology of protein , and promote the improvement of diagnostic programs; organoids similar to human organs can also be constructed, which plays an important role in drug screening and clinical companion diagnosis.
treatment stage is the most important medical application field in synthetic biology. The target organisms produced using biosynthetic technology can be directly applied to treatment methods such as cell immunotherapy and engineered bacteria targeted therapy. Among them, cell immunotherapy is one of the areas that best reflect the advanced application of synthetic biology technology. Its core principle is to use biosynthetic technology to transform cells to accurately control cell functions and provide patients with long-term and continuous disease management. The highly representative Car-T therapy (Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Immunotherapy, chimeric antigen receptor T cell immunotherapy, referred to as "Car-T therapy" in this article) has achieved considerable results in the treatment of hematologic cancer. Car-T therapy is the addition of chimeric antigen receptors on the surface of T cells to enhance specific antigen binding and T cell activation ability to the surface of tumor cells. Adding chimeric antigen receptors to different immune cells can differentiate into Car-NK, Car-M and other derivative therapies.
With the advancement of synthetic biology, more standardized and modular biological components similar to chimeric antigen receptors can be designed, and a large number of highly specific cellular therapies that receive specific molecular signals through receptors and trigger a series of downstream reactions through gene circuit processing can be arranged and combined, which will improve the effectiveness and safety of therapies and provide unlimited possibilities for the further development of various therapies.
Synthetic biology creates specific cell therapies through series of transformations [3]
In addition to transforming cells, synthetic biology can also transform bacteria and viruses, generate oncolytic bacteria/viruses targeting the tumor microenvironment, and play the role of loading drugs and recruiting immune cells to kill cancer cells. For example, the engineered attenuated Salmonella CVD908ssb-TXSVN, which expresses tumor-associated anti-apoptotic antigens, can promote cytotoxic T-cell infiltration and enhance the ability to recognize and kill tumor cells.
In terms of clinical treatment, the materials and drugs obtained from synthetic biology support fermentation engineering can also play a significant role. In the production of many clinical drugs such as insulin, antibiotics, hormones, immunosuppressants, fermentation methods have achieved the replacement of natural extraction methods or chemical synthesis methods. Other materials produced by synthetic biology, such as synthetic hyaluronic acid and artificial cornea, as well as physiologically compatible adhesives required for R&D, drug carriers for targeted delivery of drugs, etc., all play an important role in clinical work.
With the development of synthetic biology at the tissue level and above, we may look forward to achieving more leapfrog innovative applications in clinical treatment, such as the production of "replacement blood" without antigen recognition through red blood cell transformation to overcome the difficulties of blood type matching and avoid the risk of transfusion reaction ; use bioprinting technology to inject cells into fixed frames to form artificial tissues and even form organs to solve the problem of tissue or organ failure caused by aging, diseases, accidents or birth defects.
Synthetic Biology provides support for green energy and energy security
On August 18, 2022, the Ministry of Science and Technology and nine other departments jointly issued the "Implementation Plan for Science and Technology to Support Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutralization (2022-2030)", proposing to focus on studying a batch of cutting-edge and disruptive technologies for carbon neutrality to support the decline in carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption per unit GDP.According to the World Fund for Nature (WWF), as of 2030, biomanufacturing can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1 billion to 2.5 billion tons per year, becoming one of the important ways to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals. The biomanufacturing process of synthetic biology has the advantages of green environmental protection and cost reduction and efficiency improvement. At this stage, it mainly converts renewable biomass into fuel through fermentation projects, reduces carbon emissions, and creates new green energy options, providing solutions to solve the environmental protection problems of existing fuel machinery, and becoming a new guarantee for energy security based on its renewability.
Synthetic biology is mainly used in the production of fuel ethanol in the field of energy development. The production of fuel ethanol can be mainly divided into the conversion of starch fermentation into ethanol and the conversion of cellulose fermentation into ethanol (both starch and cellulose are polysaccharides connected to glucose , with different connection methods). Most of the starch comes from grain crops, and its fermentation difficulty is low and the conversion technology is very mature, but there is a risk of competing for grain with the people; using cellulose to convert fuel ethanol requires a large amount of wood chips, straw and other wood crops. Although the raw materials are cheap and easy to obtain, its original ingredient lignin is relatively complex, and the pretreatment process increases the overall cost of the transformation process.
Synthetic biology supports the sustainable production of biofuels [4]
As world agricultural powers, the United States and Brazil have significant advantages in the production of fuel ethanol. The cost of corn cultivation in the United States is nearly 40% lower than that in China, and its fuel ethanol price is already relatively competitive than oil. The United States has become the world's largest producer and consumer of automotive ethanol gasoline. Brazil's sugarcane production ranks first in the world, which provides sufficient raw materials for fuel ethanol, and Brazil has also become the world's second largest fuel ethanol producer. my country is currently the third largest producer and application of fuel ethanol in the world. In view of food security issues, my country's fuel ethanol production method is gradually changing to the use of comprehensive utilization methods of non-grain economic crops and cellulose raw materials. The current main research topic is how to select appropriate engineered bacteria with the help of synthetic biology to enhance the market competitiveness of green energy by using the cost of producing ethanol close to or lower than the traditional methods.
Overall, the production of ethanol through synthetic biology still faces the problems of high costs, competing for grain with people and land with grain. However, with the continuous development of synthetic biology, scientists are studying new bacteria and algae , seeking ways to produce sustainable and environmentally friendly biofuels in more forms, such as producing isobutanol , hydrogen and methane through customized engineering bacteria, and converting gaseous gases such as methane into fuel, but it will take some time to enter industrial production.
Synthetic biology may subvert the appearance of agriculture and food
Synthetic biology has great room for play in the fields of agriculture and food. Plant growth and development require a large number of nutrients, mainly including carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, etc. Insufficient nutrients will cause plants to suffer from many problems such as weak growth, frequent occurrence of pests and diseases, low quality, and reduced yields. Synthetic biology can reconstruct solutions to related problems.
Synthetic biology can achieve the enhancement of plant performance through the optimization of species performance, and build new imaginations in multiple links such as plant planting, food production, and ecological circulation.
For example, using relevant technologies of metabolic engineering, we can study the metabolic pathways of plants, enhance carbon fixation capabilities by enhancing synthetic pathways, reducing respiration and other consumption pathways, helping crops synthesize more starch, and increasing the yield of grain crops; we can also customize nitrogen fixation symbionts, so that plants that did not originally have the ability to fix nitrogen can obtain nitrogen elements from the air through symbiotic relationships, so as to reduce dependence on nitrogen element in the soil, thereby increasing soil fertility.
Synthetic biology can also express active substances in plants, optimize the proportion of different nutrient elements, improve the growth efficiency of plants, and reduce the use of fertilizers; or add new substances to agricultural products, such as adding carotene to rice to improve the nutritional value of food. The improvement of plant stress resistance can also be achieved with the help of plant synthetic biology. By constructing and introducing efficient stress-resistant components, the plants' resistance to lodging, insect and disease resistance is improved, and the use of pesticides is reduced accordingly, providing favorable conditions for agricultural operations.
Application prospects of synthetic biology in nutrition and agriculture [5]
Synthetic biology can also change the production form of grain with the help of biological fermentation technology. In the field of " artificial meat ", soy protein required to make the well-known " vegetarian meat " can be produced using yeast; the application of producing "substantive meat" by culturing muscle cells and other methods is still in the research stage, and its cost is almost "sky-high", and may be difficult to reduce in the short term. At present, the production of "artificial meat" is mainly completed through yeast and animal cell culture. Making animal and plant proteins through photoautotrophics and other animals is the future development direction of the industry and is still in the theoretical research stage. Photoautotrophic organisms refer to some kind of plant that can use the energy of sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into starch and serve as food for other plants or animals. They can be understood as chassis cells with photosynthesis capabilities. Cultivating such cells to build a food factory, replacing farmlands with large area, low output value per unit and large environmental changes can further strengthen the guarantee of food security.
Products produced using biofermentation technology can also provide and treat materials for agriculture and downstream, such as providing agricultural materials such as agricultural plastic films, food additives and other food and beverage ingredients, or assist in the treatment of agricultural waste such as sewage and straw.
Since synthetic biology is still in its development stage, the academic community and the public have not yet fully understood its potential and risks. Its application faces many controversies in science and ethics, so it will take some time to apply it on a large scale in the fields of agriculture and food.
Three business models of synthetic biology enterprises
With the expansion and deepening of synthetic biology research, the number of enterprises gathered in the industry continues to rise. According to their business type, synthetic biology enterprises can be divided into three categories, namely product-oriented enterprises with biological or chemical products as the target products, service-oriented enterprises that provide biological transformation services based on their own general design platforms, and R&D enterprises that develop special technologies for synthetic biology.
Product-oriented enterprises are mostly high-tech manufacturing or new biomedical technology enterprises. They are currently mainstream players in the synthetic biology track. They focus more on special research on the market where the product is located, and introduce synthetic biology technology in the process of seeking product performance improvement and production cost reduction. The value of such companies is essentially determined by the main R&D technology of their core products, while synthetic biology exists as a value-enhancing tool for product gain.
Unlike the former, the core competitiveness of service-oriented enterprises lies in their own synthetic biology resources and technologies, such as a rich gene bank and cell resource library, as well as the ability to design and high-throughput screening of chassis cells suitable for production of different products. Service-oriented enterprises are usually transformed from product-oriented enterprises, and their core businesses are gradually transitioning to providing services to the latter to avoid the business risks brought about by mass production and sale of specific products. This type of enterprise also has the core difference between Thermo Fisher Scientific (the global scientific service giant) and other Thermo Fisher Scientific (the giant in the field of scientific services) and other technologies and reagent research giants. It is whether the various technologies of synthetic biology can be organically combined and form a general platform for designing organisms. The growth and development of service-oriented enterprises are closely related to the development of the synthetic biology industry. Most of the leading enterprises are currently foreign enterprises, and only some enterprises in my country are still in the transformation stage.
R&D enterprises are commonly found in academic clusters with highly developed technology. The focus of corporate business is technological innovation, and their research directions are mostly focused on a certain technical link in synthetic biology. Such companies are usually small and sophisticated, and the success or failure of a company's operations depends entirely on the success or failure of technological research and development. However, because of their profound technology, companies are often favored by industrial giants and are easy to acquire.
Conclusion
Synthetic biology is a new concept, but not a completely new field. Many technologies used in combination with synthetic biology have long been widely used in various fields, but synthetic biology has redefined the existing technologies of biology through combining engineering ideas, greatly enhancing the ability to transform organisms. Therefore, unlike tracks such as gene editing, which are created by specific core technologies, the mutation model created a new field, synthesized biology is a gradual process from quantitative change to qualitative change that has gradually entered business practice to better meet existing needs as a large number of support for technical performance improvement and cost reduction.
We believe that we should think more about the investment opportunities in the synthetic biology track from the demand side rather than the supply side, and focus on which synthetic biology companies have the ability to meet existing demand at low cost, rather than looking for the applicable direction of their products in the current high-demand track.
Reference:
[1] Here's What Fruits and Vegetables Looked Like Before We Domesticated Them. Science alert, https://www.sciencealert.com/fruits-vegetables-before-domestication-photos-genetically-modified-food-natural
[2] Verhamme DT, Arents JC, Postma PW, Crielaard W, Hellingwerf KJ. Investigation of in vivo cross-talk between key two-component systems of Escherichia coli. Microbiology. 2002;148(Pt 1):69-78. doi: 10.1099/00221287-148-1-69.
[3] Kitada T, DiAndreth B, Teague B, et al. Programming gene and engineered-cell therapies with synthetic biology[J]. Science, 2018, 359(6376): eaad1067.
[4] 16 Important Pros and Cons of Biofuels to Know, Our Endangered World, https://www.ourendangeredworld.com/energy/pros-and-cons-of-biofuels/
[5] Roell M S, Zurbriggen M D. The impact of synthetic biology for future agriculture and nutrition[J]. Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 2020, 61: 102-109.
Note: The article is the author's personal opinion only, does not represent the company's position, and does not involve any investment advice. The market is risky, so be cautious when investing.
author introduction:
Xia Coconut, senior analyst of Optics Valley Venture Capital
Ph.D., Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has rich scientific research experience, undertakes or participates in the research and development of sub-projects of the National Key Research Plan and the general projects, has published over-level papers (IF=17), pays attention to the cutting-edge development of the industry, and has in-depth research on synthetic biology, nucleic acid biology and nucleic acid drugs, cell therapy and gene editing.
