And it was then that the engineers took over. They understood that the basic physics of materials was far too complicated and that if they were to make anything practical out of this new science they would have to work with a limited subset of physics. This new breed, called electronics engineers, defined their own library of components and the 'recipes' they needed to build them in a semiconductor—components like resistors, capacitors, transistors and wires. They defined standard voltage levels and standard formats for binary computation. It was more than a decade before Robert Noyce at Fairchild and Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments almost simultaneously combined a number of these components together on a single chunk of semiconductor and the integrated circuit was born. Today, almost a half century later, we can reliably manufacture over a billion of these components, invented by engineers, on a single sliver of silicon and, as this conference knows better than most, microelectronics has truly revolutionized our world.
Today, when I hear Berkeley professors Jay Keasling, Adam Arkin, or Dan Fletcher talk about the nascent field of Synthetic Biology, I really have the sense that I'm back with Shockley and his team as history is about to repeat itself, but this time with biology at its core rather than physics. For many years now, molecular and cell biologists have worked hard to uncover the secrets of how living systems work. First we understood the genome, and proteins and enzymes, and eventually how specific pathways operate in living systems like the E-coli bacterium or a yeast microbe. More recently we have discovered how to assemble genetic material and introduce it into simple living systems to modify their properties. As the scientists continue to understand more and more about living systems, and as we develop the instruments we need to observe their behavior in the finest, atomic-level detail, once again the engineers have arrived on the scene. Not satisfied with simply understanding living systems, our engineers want to harness that knowledge and apply it for a useful purpose. This time, however, it isn't a germanium, gallium arsenide or silicon substrate. This time the substrate for their work is actually a bacterium like E-coli, yeast, or bacillus. This time these chemical and bioengineers aren't working with transistors, resistors, and capacitors as their components, but rather they are using pathways, enzymes and sequences of base-pairs to construct their new designs. But the basic principle is the same—don't try to use all of biology but rather define, characterize and re-use a restricted and well-understood library of 'biocomponents'—'bio-bricks' as this new generation of students refer to them—derived from a wide variety of different living systems and used to build entirely new living cells that have a specific purpose. Just like a silicon chip is an assembly of components designed to perform a specific function, such as to implement an i-Pod, a cell phone, or a personal computer, these new living systems are assembled on a biological substrate to perform a specific function as well.
This time, however, that function might be the conversion of corn syrup to a drug that cures malaria or certain types of cancer, or it might even be a bacterium that photosynthesizes carbon in the air directly into diesel fuel! In the mean time, inspired by the potential impact of their fundamental work, the basic science is accelerating forward and providing the engineers with ever more interesting and important understanding and capability. It is truly an image of the virtuous cycle we have all benefited from in the age of the semiconductor.
These challenges and opportunities presented by Synthetic Biology are what our faculty and students are working on, along with a handful of colleagues throughout the world today, in this new and exciting field. They are working to understand a small number of microbes very, very well (their 'substrates') and they are compiling a catalog of well-understood, useful components that they can 'assemble' on their new substrates for a purpose.
Over the next quarter century, I have absolutely no doubt that this new field of Synthetic Biology has the potential to revolutionize our world just as microelectronics has done in our own professional lifetimes.
Link to presentation
