Synthetic Biology Pathway to Molecular Manufacturing?

I must begin by admitting that my thinking has been limited. When I think of biology, I think of complex poorly-understood feedback loops; designs that have been cobbled together by random chance over billions of years; systems that can be played with, but not really engineered.

When I think about human adaptation of biology, I think of slow improvement via genetic engineering or even breeding. And when I think of a cross between biology and nanotechnology, I think either of nanomedicine, or of the old tired arguments about how nothing can improve on biology so the best we can do is try to imitate nature's designs.

Now let's consider molecular manufacturing. A description of molecular manufacturing might go something like this:

You design machines at the molecular scale - machines that, working collectively, can build more of the same by atomically precise mechanically guided chemistry. You build a set of these machines, by hook or by crook, and fasten them together. They build duplicate machines. Exponential growth allows a tiny construction module, duplicated many times, to produce useful amounts of product. Then, you program the system to build a wide range of products.

There is a branch of synthetic biology that is working toward this same goal. The idea is to design an entire genome, to produce a minimal organism, that can duplicate itself, and eventually can be used for human benefit and profit.

This goal will take many years to achieve; the above-linked paper, which looks a lot like a roadmap, includes an impressive list of unknowns and problems to be solved. And the result will still face many of the limitations of biology: fluid drag from water, chemical transport by diffusion, limited material properties. And many of the components may not be completely understood even after it is built, since they will have been adapted from natural organisms.

But the creation of an engineered, constructed system that builds copies of itself from small molecules would, in my book, count as molecular manufacturing. It would not simply be duplicating existing life forms by means of synthesized chemicals (a project that is also underway). In fact, the roadmap discusses the possibility that the system might work better without membranes - and one of the reasons listed is the possibility of "spacial arraying for nanofabrication."

I don't know whether the first nanofactory will be produced by some other pathway before this synthetic biology project comes to completion. But I think this has to be considered a possible pathway to molecular manufacturing. There are now several pathways, each engaging lab researchers. One way or another, molecular manufacturing is coming.

(Thanks to Herman Salgado for asking the question that led to this post.)

Chris Phoenix

Comments

[joe]

Your url is not linked to the "minimal organism" text. By looking at the source, I could see the url: http://www.nature.com/msb/journal/v2/n1/full/msb4100090.html

[Chris Phoenix]

Argh, stupid Typepad WYSIWYG interface. Fixed now, thanks.

Chris