Technology Vision 2023 | When Atoms meet Bits #TechVision Biology Lastly, this “big bang” of computing and science synthesis cost about $10/base pair and is now about 269, 270 is giving life to an entirely new 昀椀eld: synthetic $0.10/base pair today. biology. Driven forward by technological advances in DNA sequencing and synthesis and technology- These falling costs have had a signi昀椀cant impact on inspired best practices, synthetic biology combines synthetic biology—because both DNA sequencing engineering principles with biology to create new and DNA synthesis are critical to the process. To organisms or enhance existing ones. Its promise illustrate, let’s imagine a company wants to produce lies in what those organisms are then able to do synthetic vanilla. First, they go through their (now or produce, from new foods to pharmaceuticals, much larger) database of DNA sequences to fuels, and more—thereby changing manufacturing determine which might be most likely to generate 271 Next, the most promising are (more processes and products as we know them today. that 昀氀avor. cheaply) synthesized and put into cells, like yeast A recent article published in Scienti昀椀c Report cells. The new organisms start producing chemicals, predicts that synthetic biology may be the next major and whichever is best is increased in production. advancement following microelectronics and the With this manufacturing process determined, internet, and one of the main reasons for this is that the company is set to produce synthetic vanilla the cost of both DNA sequencing and DNA synthesis 昀氀avoring. (the “reading” and “writing” of genetic code) is 268 halving roughly every two years. To get a sense, in Of course, most businesses cannot do this on their 2001, the cost to sequence a human genome was own—but they could work with a company like $100 million, and it is roughly $600 today (and could Ginkgo Bioworks, a one-stop-shop for synthetic be as little as $100 next year); ten years ago, gene biology, to do so. Ginkgo provides the technology