Intellectual Property & Your Health Series - History of synthetic biology

Shidonna Raven
Apr 22
2 min read

Photo / Image Source: Unsplash,

Before you go to the Doctor!

History of synthetic biology

One could consider the first scientist to have successfully conducted synthetic biology research to be Friedrich Wöhler, a German chemist who in 1828 applied ammonium chloride to silver isocyanate to produce urea, the main nitrogen-carrying compound found in the urine of mammals. In so doing, he synthesized an organic substance from inorganic matter. From then on, scientists routinely created organic matter through various conventional chemical processes.

In the 1970s scientists began to conduct experiments with genetic engineering and recombinant DNA technology, in which they modified the genetic code of wild-type (naturally occurring) bacteria by inserting single wild-type genes that could alter bacterial function. This technology led to the production of biologic drugs, agents made from proteins and other organic compounds produced by bacteria with recombinant DNA; one such compound is synthetic insulin. However, because genetic engineering uses existing genes and bacteria, it has technical limitations and is expensive.

In the early 1970s, paralleling developments in genetic engineering, scientists discovered ways to manufacture customized genes, which were built from scratch, or de novo (Latin for “anew”), one nucleotide (one unit of DNA) at a time. Throughout the 1980s and ’90s and in the early 2000s, DNA synthesis technologies became increasingly time- and cost-efficient, thereby enabling steady advance and more ambitious experimentation. By manufacturing novel stretches of DNA, scientists have been able to efficiently create de novo organic compounds that are more complex than those that occur in nature and that are better suited for specific purposes.