The Era of Digital Synthesis of Life: The Blessing and Curse of Technology in Biological Experiments

In the last episode, we talked about how infectious bacteria have repeatedly transformed through human history. For tens of thousands of years, infectious bacteria and humans have co-evolved through repeated struggles and compromises. However, in the second half of the 20th century, an unprecedented situation occurs. Human beings have been able to directly touch their genes. With the development of genetic technology, the field of synthetic biology was born, which restores or creates life forms only with DNA information in computer files. The era of digital synthesis of life has opened.

The Spanish flu, which killed 50 million people in the early 20th century, was buried with the victims without knowing its identity, but in 1997, a US CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) research team re-extracted it from the lungs of corpses buried in the Alaska frozen ground and identified its identity. It was discovered and restored 15 years later. It brought out a virus that was 95 years old and brought it back to life. In 2002, researchers at the State University of New York assembled the polio virus using only genetic information. Although less toxic than the original, the researchers were shocked that this was possible.

In 2011, technology was developed simultaneously in the Netherlands and the United States to make avian influenza viruses airborne to mammals. Originally, viruses have a barrier between species, so they do not cross over to humans or other animals, but they figured out a way to artificially break down that barrier. While this technology is designed to develop treatments or vaccines, it can also intentionally or accidentally create biological weapons or pathogens that will cause pandemics such as SARS, MERS, or COVID-19. For that reason, the US National Advisory Board on Biosecurity (NSABB) has decided that both studies will be published. <사이언스>and <네이처>Requested deletion of some content.

A Canadian research team has shown that the horsepox virus, a relative of smallpox, can be made by buying pieces of DNA sold by mail. Today, anyone can purchase genetic scissors such as ‘CRISPR-Cas9’ on the Internet and learn the basic technology of desired genetic experiments at overseas biohacker camps. there was no Whole genome information of the smallpox virus is already publicly known.

In 2016, the research team of J. Craig Venter, famous for the Human Genome Project, created a completely new artificial bacterium. The germ, named JCVI-syn3.0, is designed to mount on anything, such as the chassis frame of a car. It was created for the purpose of being equipped with a cure or a carbon or waste disposal function, but someone could be equipped with a mass destruction function, and it could evolve into an unexpected being wandering nature on its own.

This development of technology reminds me of the ‘Russian flu’ mystery that occurred in Russia and China in 1977. As a result of digging into the reason because of the phenomenon that only those in their 30s and older do not get sick, scientists found out that this is exactly the same as the influenza virus that was prevalent in the 1950s. Considering how mutagenic the influenza virus is, this was like the reappearance of my deceased father. Experts suspected the leak of the lab-stored virus, but the Chinese and Russian governments officially denied it.

If we do not conduct national regulation and monitoring of biological experiments, in the near future we may have to find out where new infectious agents come from – whether they are natural or man-made. Blessing or curse, we live in a technologically advanced world. What God or eons could do, we can now do in the laboratory.

/Song Joon-ho, Inha University Medical School Professor

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