This project is jointly funded by the Studies of Policy, Science, Engineering and Technology component of the Science and Society Program in SBE and by the Prokaryotic Molecular Cellular Biology Program in BIO. The Principal Investigator (PI) will spend a sabbatical year (with additional effort in adjoining summers) in residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a visiting fellow affiliated with the NSF-IGERT-sponsored "Program on Emerging Technologies (PoET)." This project will produce two books: (1) a summary of the history, current status and foreseeable prospects of synthetic biology, aimed at a scientifically literate audience; and, (2) a second, shorter version addressed to non-scientists, with the goal of encouraging their interest in science (especially chemistry) and developing a scientifically informed basic understanding of this "brave new world" of synthetic biology. More than five decades of spectacular progress in the molecular life sciences have now culminated in realistic expectations that humans can not only re-engineer living systems, but may also soon be able to create them de novo. Critical to this development have been major breakthroughs in genomics (the study of entire genomes) and structural biology (elucidation of the complete three-dimensional structures of biological macromolecules). Work in both of these fields now routinely proceeds to the ultimate level of resolution (single nucleotides and single atoms, respectively). This progress has enabled the rational manipulation and recombination of the parts and processes of living organisms to produce novel traits and capabilities: "synthetic biology." This field has now unquestionably entered a take-off phase. However, as with many new scientific areas, its potential technological applications (and risks) remain highly uncertain. Moreover, the general public has little understanding of synthetic biology and scientists working in the field, of necessity, must concentrate mostly on their own research and have limited time to analyze societal implications and communicate them intelligibly to the public. This project addresses these issues. The PI will play an active role in seminars and workshops conducted by PoET, which involves faculty, visiting scientists, engineers, and a cadre of interdisciplinary graduate students who investigate "diverse implications of emerging technologies and how responses to anticipated policy or societal implications may shape the way in which those technologies are developed." The PI will also affiliate with MIT's Synthetic Biology Working Group headed by Drew Endy. The intellectual merit of this project consists of pulling together the wide scope of synthetic biology and summarizing it, together with its historical antecedents in synthetic chemistry, in a form that will be generally useful to the scientific community, including policymakers. No such book currently exists. The broader impacts include: (a) introducing technical expertise in the biomolecular life sciences to the PoET program, including its graduate students; (b) connecting the technology policy group at MIT with the Synthetic Biology Working Group; and (c) providing a high-quality introduction to synthetic biology for the lay public (on a level suitable for high school students and above).
