Obsolescence and Intervention: On Synthetic-Biological Entities

Oftentimes, topics that might fall outside of science’s remit seem to end up becoming a part of it, sooner or later. This appears to be the case of synthetic biology, a new biological science (although some maintain that it is a form of engineering, or treat it as such; Endy, 2005), which seems to have become essential to the understanding of living beings and their extreme manipulation. I believe it to be a new form of biology. In truth, synthetic biology has a long history and, conceptually speaking, may well have formed part of the interests and research efforts of our illustrious predecessors throughout the first half of the twentieth century and even earlier. In any event, and broadly speaking, it may be asserted that such efforts were premature and that the state of the science, at that time, did not allow for progress, in terms of the modification, creation, or recreation of organisms or parts thereof that we have today. Now, it has rather come of age, which is why I think of synthetic biology as a young or new biological science (Moya, 2014). To a great extent, when you talk about synthetic biology, what you are doing, first and foremost, is making a statement of intent, if not expressing your concern, wish, or hope that any biological organism which this discipline might examine should be completely under control, and that it should not deviate even the slightest bit from the role that has been ascribed to it. Of course, if some achievements had not already been made in the field of synthetic biology, clinging to a mere statement of intent would do little to further its chances of survival in the future. If some sciences make headway, it is because some of their initial achievements thrust fame, awareness, and recognition upon them, in the eyes of the scientific community and the rest of society. Here is where we start to get to grips with wishes and hopes for these new sciences and their potential. This is what is happening with synthetic biology. Fundamentally, the synthetic biologist aspires to make manufactured biological entities behave just as a car might, once it has been put together on an assembly line. The metaphor of the car is as valid as that of any other mechanical entity, or any other type of entity, with perhaps the only condition being that they should all be put together on an assembly line. A car, effectively, begins to take shape on an assembly line and ends up having a specific physical form. It comprises many different components and each one has a specific function, as designated by the manufacturer. Together, its components combine to form a mechanical entity that functions in a pre-determined way because of prior knowledge of the manner in which each component works, and the manufacturer puts them all together following a predetermined plan, so that the whole may function as desired. Attempting to make a manufactured biological entity function in the same way as a car leads us to make two relevant observations. To begin with, there is the obsolescence of the entity, then there is intervention in the entity itself. The nature of these properties differs in cells when they are compared to cars. First, let us take a look at the question of obsolescence. As everyone knows, a car has a limited lifespan. Its constituent parts, in particular those that are essential in order for it to run, become worn down, inevitably, until the materials [from which they are made] break down and become altered through the contact of some parts with others, or on account of the various reasons for which the car might cease to run. I refer not to the failure of the car to run, on account of damage incurred following an accident, but quite simply to wear and tear, rendering it unable to perform the purpose for which it has been intended. To what degree might this metaphor apply to the biological entity, in general, and the syntheticbiological entity, in particular? In truth, the following question might be asked, equally, of the biological entity and the car. Might it suffer some type of wear and tear that causes it either to stop functioning or to function in a different way before, for example, reaching the culminating point of its division or reproduction? In other words, before it can reproduce itself? This is, in effect, the case. Let us take, for example, an individual biological entity; a microorganism or a cell from a multicellular organism which, on account of its specialization, could be a germ cell – the purpose of which is the reproduction of the organism – or a non-germ cell, which will subdivide through mitosis, creating copies of itself. In the case of the microorganism, or the non-germ cells, there comes a point at which they divide, producing two genetic copies of themselves; however, up until that point, they have undergone transformation processes, ending with metabolism, that have altered them in relation to what they might have