Genomics: Our oil-crunch cure?

Already, DuPont (DD, news, msgs) has made strides in that direction by launching a big plant in Tennessee to make propanediol, a key component of polymers used in cosmetics, detergents and antifreeze, with renewable feedstocks instead of petroleum. Synthetic genomics would take the effort a step further by creating the feedstock artificially.

Tom Knight is another top scientist pushing the envelope in this field. He and a pack of fellow MIT scientists have invented a set of interchangeable genetic components that they call BioBricks. They can be fitted into cells like Lincoln Logs to help construct synthetic life forms.

As evidence for his point of view that synthetic biology is the "next-generation biotech," Williams points out that MIT is pouring a tremendous amount of resources into the field. The school produces the annual International Genetically Engineered Machine competition to showcase the field and recruit engineers to work on campus. The strategy seems to be working: The competition last year attracted 56 teams from 20 countries for the purpose of seeing how many organisms and devices could be built from a set of off-the-shelf biological parts.

Looking back at this period a decade from now, we may well look at the advent of synthetic biology and genomics in the same way we look at the early days of the computer revolution, when kids at Harvard, MIT and Stanford were assembling the building blocks of the sort of software, hardware and networking power that we now take for granted.

Only this time, the kids are creating energy and life, not just Pong, spreadsheets and e-mail.

"We are trying to solve one of the biggest problems in humanity, and that is our destruction of the environment," Venter said. "We really need to find an alternative to taking carbon out of the ground, burning it and putting it into the atmosphere. That is the single biggest contribution I could make."

There are no public companies to bet on yet, but get ready: There will be. The leaders today are Amyris Biotechnologies, LS9 and Synthetic Genomics of La Jolla, Calif., founded by Venter and funded in part by minority investors such as British Petroleum (BP) and venture capitalists Draper Fisher Jurvetson. SynGen appears closest to commercial launch; if its efforts to finish the research on artificial-microbe production and then scale up industrial prototypes pan out over the next two years, look for an IPO by 2012.

Fine print

To learn more about the J. Craig Venter Institute, click here. For a video of Venter speaking about synthetic genomics, visit this YouTube page. Read all about synthetic microbial genomes here. Check out Venter's mission to become a modern-day Darwin and learn more about genes in the ocean here and here.

To learn more about Codon Devices, which bills itself as a "constructive biology" company, click here. To learn about Blue Heron, click here. To learn about Synthetic Genomics, click here. To learn about the iGEM competition, click here. Wired magazine wrote about the last competition here. To learn about BioBricks, click here.

Naturally, there are a few blogs and academic pages devoted to synthetic biology, including this one at CalTech, this one at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, this one at Princeton, this one in Dresden, Germany, and this one in Switzerland. To learn about DuPont's efforts with engineered microbes, click here. . . . Learn about jatropha, which appears to be a great alternative to corn and sugar cane as ethanol feedstock, here. . . . To learn more about the Williams Inference Center, click here.

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At the time of publication, Jon Markman did not own or control shares of any companies mentioned in this column.

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