Human Health and Environmental Risks Posed by Synthetic Biology R&D for Energy Applications

Abstract

What are the human health and environmental risks posed by synthetic biology research and development (R&D) for energy applications? We found it surprisingly difficult to answer this seemingly straightforward question in our review of the risk-related synthetic biology literature. To our knowledge, no entity to date has published a comprehensive review of this literature. Thus, this analysis aims to fill that void and, at a high level, answer the question that we pose. Risk-related synthetic biology literature addresses risk from different perspectives. Much of the literature that we reviewed treats the concept of risk in synthetic biology R&D broadly, enumerating few specific risks. Nevertheless, after reviewing >200 documents, we identified 44 discrete risk issues; 18 of those related to human health and 26 to the environment. We clustered these risk issues into categories that reflect and summarize their content. We categorized human health risk issues as follows: allergies, antibiotic resistance, carcinogens, and pathogenicity or toxicity. Environmental risk issues were categorized as follows: change or depletion of the environment, competition with native species, horizontal gene transfer, and pathogenicity or toxicity. Our efforts to understand what the synthetic biology R&D-related risk issues are stemmed from a larger research project in which we used risk issues identified in the literature as a point of departure in interviews with biosafety professionals and scientists engaged in synthetic biology R&D. We wrote this article after multiple biosafety professionals told us that accessing our risk-related literature analysis would aid them in their work.

Photosynthetic Co-production of Succinate and Ethylene in a Fast-Growing Cyanobacterium, Synechococcus elongatus PCC 11801

“…A CRISPR-based, markerless genome editing approach was used to develop the efe-expressing strain of S. elongatus PCC 11801. Antibiotic marker-free recombinant strains are likely to be safer for use in large-scale, outdoor cultivations as they do not pose the risk of spread of antibiotic resistance [45]. Further, the CRISPR-based techniques speed up the chromosomal segregation in cyanobacteria that contain multiple copies of chromosome [3].…”

“…Nitrogen deprivation is known to induce overflow metabolism in cyanobacteria apart from causing an increase in the intracellular 2-oxoglutarate pool [45,46]. It was of interest to test the effect of nitrate on succinate productivity as 2-oxoglutarate is a key precursor for the EFE enzyme.…”

“…While growth was retarded under nitrate limited state, the recombinant strain did not show bleached phenotype unlike the wild type strain (Figure 3b). Generally, glycogen deficient strains exhibit a non-bleaching phenotype during nitrogen starvation as a result of an unknown mechanism [45,48]. Recently, a correlation between glycogen deficiency and alternation in the adenylate energy charge has been shown which in turn leads to higher accumulation of organic acids under nitrogen deplete condition [49].…”

The whack-a-mole governance challenge for AI-enabled synthetic biology: literature review and emerging frameworks

“…The next major breakthrough might relate to plants ( Eslami et al, 2022 ) or even to mammalian systems ( Yan et al, 2023 ). Despite the small scale, the intermediate term risks are significant, and include contaminating natural resources, aggravation of species with complex gene modifications, threats to species diversity, abuse of biological weapons, laboratory leaks, and man-made mutations, hurting workers, creating antibiotic resistant superbugs, or damaging human, animal, or plant germlines ( Hewett et al, 2016 ; O’Brien and Nelson, 2020 ; Nelson et al, 2021 ; Sun et al, 2022 ). Some even claim synthetic biology produces potential existential risks from lab accidents or engineered pandemics ( Ord, 2020 ), especially in combination with AI ( Boyd and Wilson, 2020 ).…”

Properties and detectability of rogue synthetic biology (SynBio) products in complex matrices

“…In 2016, a series of formal Scientific Opinions from the European Union emphasized a critical lack of understanding of the potential interactions between synthetic biology (SynBio) constructs (particularly nucleic acid constructs) and endogenous bacterial communities and potential for changes in bacterial evolutionary fitness, ecological competitiveness, horizontal gene movement, and other significant phenomena that might emerge (Epstein and Vermeire 2016). Fundamental knowledge that can inform the determination of potential risks or implications of synthetic biology releases into unmanaged systems and matrices are in their infancy (Torgersen 2009;Hewett et al 2016;Ahteensuu 2017;Epstein and Vermeire 2016).…”