My Journey Through Synthetic Biology

  What if I told you aging didn’t have to be a problem. What if it was something we could reprogram.  For centuries humans have looked for a solution to aging. And while nothing has seemed to show promise, scientists are now looking to solve the issue with synthetic biology. What Is Aging, Really? Aging isn’t just about wrinkles or gray hair. It’s the slow breakdown of the systems that keep us alive. Our cells divide billions of times, and each time, small errors like DNA breaks, protein misfolds, and weakening mitochondria slip through. Eventually, our biological software becomes buggy. But here’s the crazy part: Scientists are realizing that aging is a programmable process . In theory, our cells could be edited, paused, or even reversed to change the way our body “breaks-down” over time. That’s where synthetic biology can step in. Examples of Reprogramming the Clock In 2006, scientists discovered how to take a skin cell and turn it back into a stem cell using just four gene...

Picture this: you're one of only 300 people in the world with a disease so rare that no treatments exist. And it's not because doctors don't care about getting you better, it's because our evolution hasn't had enough time to offer us a solution. Life itself doesn't have an answer to make you better. That's where the concept of forced evolution comes in.  What are Rare Diseases? A rare disease is defined as a condition that affects less than 200,000 people in the United States. When added up, there are more than 7,000 rare diseases with over 30 million Americans being affected.  That's close to 1 in 11 people. Despite attempts to treat these illnesses, only ~5% of rare diseases have an FDA-approved treatment. With such a low rate of treated diseases, most patients, once diagnosed, have to deal with years of misdiagnoses, limited options, and lots of uncertainty.  Luckily, forced evolution has given researchers and scientists a chance to give these people ...

What Is Cell-Free Synthetic Biology? Synthetic biology has always revolved around one big idea: programming life like its some sort of software. But what if we didn’t need the “life” part? What if we could program biology without having to use living cells? Well, that’s exactly what cell-free synthetic biology does. Instead of engineering organisms like E. coli or yeast, scientists extract essential biological pieces like enzymes, ribosomes, and transcription factors and use them in a test tube. They're just working with the raw tools of biology, which is crazy to think about. Why Go Cell-Free? Working with living organisms is typically slow and messy. Cells need to grow, replicate, survive environmental stress, and balance thousands of internal processes. They often resist the changes we want to make. In cell-free systems, those complications disappear. Since there’s no cell wall, membrane, or metabolic network to work around, the system becomes faster, cleaner, and easier to con...

In most industries, “open-source” means something powerful: the freedom to build, freedom to learn, and freedom to collaborate. In software, it gave rise to super powerful tools like Linux, Python, and even the core of Android. Now, synthetic biology is entering its own open-source moment, and the implications are both exciting and complex. Can the ability to engineer life itself be democratized? What Is Open-Source in SynBio? Open-source synthetic biology refers to a growing movement to make genetic tools, biological parts, protocols, and even entire workflows freely available for anyone to use. It includes things like the BioBrick Registry, which offers standardized, interchangeable DNA sequences that anyone can request and use in their own experiments. Some academic labs have gone even further by creating open platforms for DNA data sharing, which massively helps reduce the barriers to entry. You might be asking, why would they do all of this? The answer: to make biology programmabl...

Welcome back! In last week’s post, we explored the Design-Build-Test-Learn (DBTL) cycle and its importance in synthetic biology projects. But as SynBio becomes more complex, with scientists designing thousands of genetic variations and running experiments at unprecedented speed, DBTL alone isn’t enough. So what’s the solution? In today’s post, I’ll introduce you to biofoundries : high-tech, automated facilities that make it possible to do synthetic biology on a massive scale.  What Is a Biofoundry? A biofoundry is a highly automated lab where biology works with robotics, AI, and cloud computing. These facilities are designed to rapidly prototype and test biological systems by running DBTL cycles with minimal human input. Using robotic arms, automated liquid handlers, and machine learning algorithms, biofoundries can carry out hundreds or even thousands  of experiments in parallel. Instead of a scientist manually pipetting DNA and waiting weeks for results, a biofoundry can des...