The Blurring Line Between Biology and Technology
ENG faculty are using insights from more powerful imaging, sensing, and probing technologies to develop new biologically based tools
Imagine a future where organs could be grown synthetically or manufactured to help address the global shortage of transplantable organs. Or food proteins or carbohydrates could be fabricated for consumption on demand, without the need to grow whole animals or plants.
“Until now, biology has mostly been a science of description—like we might think of astronomy—as the field has been focused on trying to figure out how things work,” says Professor Christopher Chen (BME, MSE), founding director of BU’s Biological Design Center. “Engineering has always been about trying to understand something well enough to make good use of it. . . . There’s been this gradual transition from developing tools to understand how things work—molecular biology tools, genetic engineering, etc.—to a mindset of, let’s build these things to figure out what we can change and control in a biological system.”
The idea of “engineering biology” has already come to life in the form of CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T-cell therapies, which can set genetically engineered immune cells into attack mode on hard-to-treat cancers; with the development of genetically modified plants that can better withstand environmental conditions or weather related to a changing climate; and most recently, and notably, even with the invention of the synthetically derived mRNA used to power Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccines.
“Developments like these have only been possible since the rise of synthetic biology and genetic engineering,” Chen says. “Now that the line has blurred, I think there’s a lot more interest in figuring out what we can control.”
Synthetic biology is an emerging area of research that designs and fabricates new biological parts, devices, and systems, often directly inspired by computer hardware and software, as well as the parts and inner workings of living cells, organisms, and other natural systems.
Over a decade ago, Chen coinvented organs-on-chips technology with collaborators at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and Boston Children’s Hospital. Today, organs-on-chips—plastic microchips containing structures and tissues that mimic working units of human organs—are commercially available. They are being used by pharmaceutical companies to test drug compounds with more accuracy than animal-based research models and being developed for a variety of other future uses, including personalized medicine.
And now that it’s possible to mimic units of organs—such as a kidney’s nephron or a lung’s air sac—Chen says the basic stepping-stones are in place for scientists to tackle much more ambitious goals, like engineering functional whole organs.
What might those structures look like? “The possibility is very high that engineered tissues or organs may look very different than the ones we’re born with,” Chen says. “Airplanes, which were first inspired by birds, are a good example. Today they don’t look like birds, but they do both have wings. When it comes to engineering organs, as we start to better understand what matters most to function, we’ll be able to separate out what’s necessary and what’s not in terms of structure and design.
On-Demand Synthetic Biology
“COVID, for better or worse, has shown the world that we are all affected by biology, and our ability to engineer solutions to biological problems quickly is going to be vital in the future,” says Professor Douglas Densmore (ECE, BME). Biology is essentially nature’s way of programming living things, making it an attractive platform for engineers who see its potential to control the health of people or even entire ecosystems.
“You and I are the living, breathing, fully realized potential of biology,” Densmore says. “It’s biology making our thoughts and words. It’s biology controlling that we self-assembled into having two arms, two hands. In the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, people realized we could take silicon and add electrons to make conductors and computers. Now instead of computers, we can read and write DNA. It’s a new way to encode information.”
Densmore wants to engage young people in the future of synthetic biology; he’s the principal investigator on a three-year, $2.3 million US Department of Defense grant that will provide underserved high school students with a crash course in all things synthetic biology and access to biotechnology companies.
In his lab, he’s working on making biological innovation as approachable as placing a custom-made order. Densmore imagines that someday synthetic biology could be even more widely distributed, perhaps available through yet-to-be-invented machines that could sit inside our homes, as common as printers.
“Biomanufacturing centers could be used on demand to create food, therapeutics, materials, maybe even units of sustainable energy,” Densmore says. “These centers or machines could manufacture engineered bacteria to help fertilize our gardens, cells that look and taste like a sweet potato, or sustainable building materials to patch up leaks in our homes.”
This article has been adapted from Bostonia. Read the full story here.