What is Synthetic Biology?

hello everybody in this video we aim to explain synthetic biology the main theme of the iGEM competition. As you’ll know biology has many different fields, such as cellular, molecular and many others. One of them is synthetic biology Synthetic biology is about redesigning organisms to make them useful by engineering them to have new abilities and properties. Usually synthetic biology is confused with genome editing because they are somewhat similar. Let’s analyze their differences. In synthetic biology scientists stitch together long stretches of DNA and insert them in the genome of an organism.

This DNA is either 00:48 - from another organism or totally new. In genome editing scientists use tools to change an organism’s own DNA. Sometimes they may add or remove a small stretch of DNA in the gene. Having now a more clear view of what synthetic biology really is let’s see what are its main goals. Firstly to identify and catalog standardized genomic parts a process that helps in quickly building novel biological systems.

Secondly synthetic biology aims to redesign 01:20 - existing biological parts such as protein parts and strands of DNA in order to give them more abilities. Another goal is to engineer microbes to be completely autonomous. This means that they are programmed to produce all of the necessary enzymes and bio functions in order to perform the complex multi-step production of natural products. The last goal is to construct from scratch a simple genome for a natural bacterium in practice synthetic biology simply changes organisms so that they will produce a substance such as a medicine or fuel or gain a new ability like sensing something in the environment. An important example is this of bioremediation.

A process to clean pollutants from the 02:05 - water, air and soil using microorganisms. Also very thoughtful was the modification of rice so that it would include carrot nutrients. Beta- carotene is a protein usually found in carrots which prevents vitamin A deficiency. VAD is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children and is a public health problem in areas such as Africa and Southeast Asia. So rice would be the perfect source of obtaining the protein due to its abundance if it only could produce it.

That’s what scientists did! A question 02:36 - you might have is: is it possible to synthesize an organism’s entire genome? Yes! They have already done it. In 2002 US scientists synthesized the first viral genome. It was easier than any other’s microorganism due to its small size. This raised some warnings for the possible mal use of the technology. Six years later the first bacterial genome was synthesized. More specifically the genome of mycoplasm genitalium. In 2017 the genome of yeast was made or Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as I like to call it! This guy is responsible for bread wine and beer. All in all we really need synthetic biology in our lives. We test our understanding of the world around us and learn interact with it in favorable ways for us. We would love to hear from you! You can post your questions in the comments or send them at our email igemnous@gmail.com.

Make sure to check out our other video where we explain 03:35 - what iGEM means. Maybe you want to be a part of our team. Also follow our social media to see our project course until the Giant Jamboree in 2021 thanks for watching!!! .