Microcosm_ E. Coli and the New Science of Life - Carl Zimmer [105]
Although there’s a lot of déjà vu in biotechnology today, some scientists have been carefully studying the fate of E. coli in the 1970s in order to avoid some of the mistakes their predecessors made. Synthetic biologists have become particularly keen historians, learning how the pioneers in their field grappled with risks, regulations, and the public perception of their work. Rather than make synthetic biology the privileged domain of an elite, Drew Endy and his colleagues are inviting the public to join in the experience. Anyone can download the codes for BioBricks. The E. coli camera is now appearing in science museums, and high school students are entering synthetic biology competitions. And rather than put all their efforts into creating a big moneymaker like insulin, synthetic biologists are trying to make cheap drugs for malaria, to demonstrate the good that can come of their work.
Synthetic biologists want to preserve this open-source spirit despite the fact that their tools may someday be used for evil ends. It’s conceivable, for example, that a government might design an organism for biological warfare. Synthetic biologists fear that if the government takes over their research, innovations will dry up. They argue that the best way to defeat an engineered pathogen is to harness the collective creativity of an open community. By keeping synthetic biology free of excessive regulations and patents, its founders hope they can foster an artificial version of the open-source evolution that has served E. coli so well for millions of years.
“IT IS CONFUSION”
In the 1970s, genetically engineered E. coli frightened people not just with its potential risks. It touched something deeper—a feeling that genetic engineering is something humans were simply not meant to do. Genetic engineering would disrupt the order of nature, the result of billions of years of evolution. Shuttling genes or other biological material from species to species would blur barriers that had been established long before humans existed, threatening to tear down the very tree of life.
“We can now transform that evolutionary tree into a network,” declared Robert Sinsheimer, a biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “We can merge genes of most diverse origin—from plant or insect, from fungus or man as we wish.” Humans, Sinsheimer believed, were not prepared for this responsibility: “We are becoming creators—makers of new forms of life—creations that we cannot undo, that will live on long after us, that will evolve according to their own destiny. What are the responsibilities of creators—for our creations and for all the living world into which we bring our inventions?”
One newspaper called genetic engineering on E. coli “the Frankenstein project.” Tampering with DNA, the MIT biologist Jonathan King declared, was “sacrilegious.” Two political activists, Ted Howard and Jeremy Rifkin, condemned genetic engineering in a 1977 book called Who Should Play God?
Thirty years later, critics of biotechnology continue to play the Prometheus card. In 1999, for example, Rifkin organized a full-page ad representing a number of organizations that were demanding controls on biotechnology. The ad, which appeared in The New York Times, displayed two examples of the new horrors humanity faced: a human ear growing from the back of a mouse and the first cloned animal, a sheep named Dolly. Across