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Fabricating a Synthetic Future
Inside a San Francisco laboratory, scientists are creating a vaccine that, once injected into a sick patient, could provide immunity to COVID-19 within just 20 minutes. The key difference from others chasing a vaccine: they're making human antibodies synthetically.
The company, DistributedBio, is mutating the antibodies from the 2002 SARS outbreak and reproducing them synthetically, by growing them in giant vats of yeast.
The science behind their cure is synthetic biology, a burgeoning new field that some believe will someday help repair defective genes, rid the planet of toxins, destroy cancer cells, and help mass-produce proteins for our consumption. It could be a key to a healthier planet—and projected to become a $19.8 billion market by 2025. In fact, synthetic biology startups have $3.8 billion since 2018.
Tech Trend: Synthetic Biology
Key Insight: Synthetic biology is a relatively new interdisciplinary field of science that combines engineering, design, and computer science with biology. Researchers design or redesign organisms on a molecular level for new purposes, to make them adaptable to different environments, or to give them different abilities.
Imagine a future in which you no longer take medication—instead, your cells are simply reprogrammed to fight off whatever ails you. Or biting into a thick, juicy Tomahawk steak, grilled to perfection—and vegan-friendly, because it is made from plant-based proteins. Or filling up your car with fuel synthetically made from algae.
We can now program biological systems like we program computers. It’s been possible to edit DNA code since the early 2010s. DNA sequences are loaded into software tools – imagine a text editor for DNA code – making edits as simple as using a word processor. After the DNA is written or edited to the researcher's satisfaction, a new DNA molecule is printed from scratch using something akin to a 3D printer. As with DNA sequencers (molecular DNA to digital DNA) the technology for DNA synthesis (digital DNA to molecular DNA) has been improving exponentially. Today's technologies routinely print out DNA chains several thousand base pairs in length that can be assembled to create new metabolic pathways for a cell or even the complete genome of a cell.
Soon, we'll have app stores –– for biology. Imagine a synthetic biology app store, where you could download and add new capabilities into any cell, microbe, plant or animal. Last year, U.K. researchers synthesized and programmed the first E. coli genome from the ground up. Next, the gigabase-scale genomes of multicellular organisms -- plants, animals, and our own genome will be synthesized.
Scientists are already programming living tissue. Scientists at the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University and the University of Vermont used cells from African clawed frogs to make tiny robots called Xenobots that move around. The bio-bots were designed using a supercomputer, a virtual environment, and evolutionary algorithms. They are new life forms that have never existed before on earth.
Action Meter
Dispatch from the fringe: Artificial Wombs
Researchers at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine successfully printed and implanted synthetic ovaries in mice that resulted in a successful pregnancy. Meanwhile, Philadelphia scientists created an artificial womb called a “biobag” and successfully kept premature lambs alive and developing normally for 28 days. We are still years away from synthesizing and growing a full-sized organic womb, but the technology represents the exciting possibilities of synthetic biology and hope for the thousands of premature babies born each year at 25 weeks gestation or earlier.
Futures Scenarios
Synthetic biology rehabilitates the Earth Optimistic, 2025 - 2030
Synthetic biology becomes a “redemptive” technology, allowing us to reverse ecological damage and providing alternatives to the technologies that caused environmental damage in the first place. We suddenly have a much better chance at rehabilitating the planet. We will soon have a technological foundation to cure any genetic disease in humankind, and in the process we will spark a Cambrian explosion of engineered plants and animals for uses that are hard to conceive of today, but will meet the global challenges we face in feeding, clothing, housing, and caring for billions of humans.
Synthetic biology is hampered by academic silos Pessimistic, 2020 - 2024
The scientific research community and government agencies are rigidly siloed as the world transitions from biology and computer science to a future in which they intersect. Silos expose fundamental weaknesses in keeping biology and technology as totally separate fields. Within the scientific community, there continues to be too much stratification – treating biology as a programmable technology isn’t in the domain of traditionalists, who prefer the established academic specialties. Our schools, which are only now starting to teach kids to code, are nowhere close to teaching kids to code living organisms.
👩🏽💻Community Foresight Challenge
Join our community of forecasters! Improve your strategic foresight skills and see how your scenarios relate to others. We invite you to use next-order thinking to build snapshots of the future.
This week's challenge: The futures of synthetic biology. What are possibilities, given where we are today with Covid-19, artificial intelligence, policy, the economy, education, climate change and other signals of macro change?
Enter the challenge: Contribute your scenarios here. We'll select a few to feature in next week's newsletter (with attribution!) If you’re new to writing scenarios, download our Axes of Uncertainty framework to help guide you.
T3
This week’s T3 (Tool To Try) is what FTI futurist Marc Palatucci calls our “Wheel of Disruption.” This framework illustrates how disruption tends to stem from ten major influential sources of macro change, with technology, the eleventh source, underpinning all others. When you’re analyzing the future of anything, including your own company, think about each area of potential disruption. Download our 11 Macro Sources of Disruption here [PDF].
Example: How does synthetic biology relate to wealth distribution, and how does that relationship affect your organization? Could the technology be used for the enrichment of a wealthy elite?
Output: Consider each of the macro sources to ensure that your framing includes areas beyond your industry and its direct adjacencies. The result is a diverse set of clear drivers you can use to guide your research and analysis.
Client Case Study: In building its strategy for the future of content, a major media organization needed to identify drivers of change within its industry as well as external drivers influencing its industry. We used the Wheel of Disruption to surface corresponding trends in geopolitics, wealth distribution and technology that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
📡 Signals We're Tracking This Week
This month marks the 200th birthday of Florence Nightingale, who pioneered what would become the driving source of computing—data science.
UPS and CVS will start using drones to deliver prescription drugs. This matters because it could clear the way for more autonomous delivery services by air and land.
📢 New FTI Foresight Product: Searchable Tech Trends
We are excited to announce the launch of a new, searchable tech trends database on the Future Today Institute website. You can now search all of the tech trends we're covering. You can do in-depth searches by technology and industry, and we've cross-linked trends to other adjacent trends that are relevant.
This is a beta product that we actually built for our own internal purposes at FTI. Version 1.0, which is what we've released to the public, is a no-frills database with a search function and our trends and analysis, which we will be updating regularly. We could have waited to build more features before releasing it, but given the crushing amount of uncertainty so many companies are dealing with now, we thought this could be a resource within organizations around the world.
SXSW: This week, Amy Webb gave a virtual version of her annual Tech Trends presentation for a special SXSW Sessions Online. You can watch the video on-demand here.
AI Talk: AI Talk is a Zoom show about AI, tech, and life with MIT Technology Review staff writer Karen Hao. This week featuring Quantitative Futurist Amy Webb. Watch here.
Nasdaq: Lessons from how futurists cope with uncertainty. Read here.
WGN: Understanding how COVID-19 will change the way we live forever. Listen here.
SCMP: China has created tech ‘new world order’ in areas like AI and data collection. Read here.
Venture Beat: Quantum computing, AI, China, and synthetics highlighted in 2020 Tech Trends report. Read here.
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