Friday, February 29th, 2008

Anticipating Synthetic Biology

Earlier this year, researchers in the lab of genetic scientist Craig Venter reported that they had built an artificial copy of a bacterium's genome from scratch in the lab. Last year Venter's team transplanted a bacterial genome from one cell into another. Machines that can build a sequence of DNA by following a recipe are available -- and scientists working at the intersection of biology and engineering are designing biological building blocks that could be snapped together to design new types of artificial organisms.

Synthetic biology has the potential to dramatically change fields from agriculture to medicine to zoology. But how will society cope with the ability for a lone researcher to, for example, build a polio virus from scratch in a private lab? And as researchers draw nearer to the ability to design and grow totally new organisms, what planning and protections need to be in place to cope with the consequences? Join Joe Palca and guests in this segment for a discussion about the promise and potential perils of synthetic biology, and the problem of research that has more than one possible use.