Safety by design: Biosafety and biosecurity in the age of synthetic genomics

Stefan A Hoffmann; James Diggans; Douglas Densmore; Junbiao Dai; Tom Knight; Emily Leproust; Jef D Boeke; Nicole Wheeler; Yizhi Cai

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.106165

Safety by design: Biosafety and biosecurity in the age of synthetic genomics

iScience. 2023 Feb 10;26(3):106165. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106165. eCollection 2023 Mar 17.

Authors

Stefan A Hoffmann¹, James Diggans², Douglas Densmore³, Junbiao Dai⁴, Tom Knight⁵, Emily Leproust², Jef D Boeke^{6

7}, Nicole Wheeler⁸, Yizhi Cai¹

Affiliations

¹ Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, University of Manchester, 131 Princess Street, Manchester M1 7DN, UK.
² Twist Bioscience, 681 Gateway Boulevard, South San Francisco, CA 9408, USA.
³ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University, 610 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
⁴ CAS Key Laboratory of Quantitative Engineering Biology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Synthetic Genomics and Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Synthetic Genomics, Shenzhen Institute of Synthetic Biology, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China.
⁵ Ginkgo Bioworks, 27 Drydock Avenue, Boston, MA 02210, USA.
⁶ Institute for Systems Genetics, and Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Pharmacology, NYU Langone Health, 435 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016, USA.
⁷ Department of Biomedical Engineering, NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA.
⁸ Institute of Microbiology and Infection, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK.

Abstract

Technologies to profoundly engineer biology are becoming increasingly affordable, powerful, and accessible to a widening group of actors. While offering tremendous potential to fuel biological research and the bioeconomy, this development also increases the risk of inadvertent or deliberate creation and dissemination of pathogens. Effective regulatory and technological frameworks need to be developed and deployed to manage these emerging biosafety and biosecurity risks. Here, we review digital and biological approaches of a range of technology readiness levels suited to address these challenges. Digital sequence screening technologies already are used to control access to synthetic DNA of concern. We examine the current state of the art of sequence screening, challenges and future directions, and environmental surveillance for the presence of engineered organisms. As biosafety layer on the organism level, we discuss genetic biocontainment systems that can be used to created host organisms with an intrinsic barrier against unchecked environmental proliferation.

Keywords: Biological sciences; Genomics; Systems biology.

Publication types

Review