Synthetic biology approaches to biological containment: pre-emptively tackling potential risks

Torres, Leticia L.; Krüger, Antje; Csibra, Eszter; Gianni, Edoardo; Pinheiro, Vitor B.

doi:10.1042/ebc20160013

Cited by 80 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 135 publications

(142 reference statements)

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“…Once spread from the laboratory, genetically engineered microorganisms (GEMs) may have direct or indirect effects on the external environment. 12 In 2011, scientists in the Netherlands and the United States developed an H5N1 avian influenza virus with human-to-human transmission capacity through targeted transformation. Studies suggest that influenza hemagglutinin (HA) is the main barrier to interspecific transmission.…”

Section: Misuse Of Biotechnologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Biosafety and biosecurity

Zhou

Song

Wang

et al. 2019

Journal of Biosafety and Biosecurity

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a b s t r a c tWith the profound changes in the international security situation, the progression of globalization, and the continuous advancement of biotechnology, the risks and challenges posed by major infectious diseases and bioterrorism to the international community are also increasing. Biosafety, therefore, presents new opportunities for international cooperation and global governance. The world has become more integrated and now shares a common destiny in terms of biosafety. In the face of the current risks and challenges, the international community must work together to avert threats, advance mutual interests, and safeguard global biosecurity. In the context of the current situation regarding biosafety and biosecurity, we conducted the present analysis, and present here some appropriate countermeasures.This is an open access article under CC BY-NC-ND license. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)This is an open access article under CC BY-NC-ND license.

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Section: Misuse Of Biotechnologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Biosafety and biosecurity

Zhou

Song

Wang

et al. 2019

Journal of Biosafety and Biosecurity

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“…[37] While some stakeholders judge the existing legal regulations (especially the EU Directives 2001/18/EC and 2009/41/EC) as sufficiently covering current research action, [38][39][40][41][42] there remains a need to observe and monitor issues of biosafety and biosecurity in SB carefully [43,44] as well as a need to focus on a possible lack of distinct laws for issues like ownership or trans-nationality. These are associated with the development of synthetic life, cells, or genomes, and are concerned with their potential impact on the environment, biological diversity as well as human health.…”

Section: Synthetic Biology: At Least Safe and Sound?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These are associated with the development of synthetic life, cells, or genomes, and are concerned with their potential impact on the environment, biological diversity as well as human health. [37] While some stakeholders judge the existing legal regulations (especially the EU Directives 2001/18/EC and 2009/41/EC) as sufficiently covering current research action, [38][39][40][41][42] there remains a need to observe and monitor issues of biosafety and biosecurity in SB carefully [43,44] as well as a need to focus on a possible lack of distinct laws for issues like ownership or trans-nationality. [45] Additionally, a frequently discussed issue is the problem of possible misuse of the results and products of SB.…”

Section: Synthetic Biology: At Least Safe and Sound?mentioning

confidence: 99%

(Re‐)Designing Nature? An Overview and Outlook on the Ethical and Societal Challenges in Synthetic Biology

Braun

Fernau

2019

Adv. Biosys.

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to provide an initial systematization of the ethical and socio-scientific debate on SB by structuring and categorizing issues that have been widely discussed and debated in recent years. The investigation included international ethical and societal research on SB, covering the period from January 2010 to December 2017. Even though we are aware that there have been several developments before it was referred to as SB, [6] this sample period was selected as the experiments of Craig Venter and his team in the year 2010 marked the birth of broader public and scientific attention to SB, as well as the rise and further establishment of SB as a distinct research discipline.We predefined five main fields of ethical research in order to map the scope of the respective debates. These fields were based on theoretical presuppositions informed by our preliminary theoretical and empirical research and the resulting experiences within the field of ethical and societal challenges of SB. The five fields are: 1) the definition and scope of possible applications; 2) questions of biosafety and -security; 3) the impact of SB on taken-for-granted cultural perceptions and values; 4) SB as a new mode of public participation in science; 5) issues of sustainable governance and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). With these five fields in mind, we searched for relevant articles on Scopus and PubMed. These are two of the largest international research databases, which cover a broad spectrum of ethical and socio-scientific work within the context of biotechnologies. The selected search term was "synthetic biology" in combination with several distinctive codes, which can be assigned to the aforementioned predefined main fields of ethical research ( Table 1).In general, our literature analysis has several methodological limitations. As it is not a comprehensive systematic literature review, it does not provide a broad set of quantitative data scrutinizing all debates, issues and questions on the ethical and societal challenges in SB. Nevertheless, our analysis provides a structured overview on and an initial systematization of the most relevant topics within the discussion on SB in recent years. Additionally, this article aims to provide an analysis and discussion of the current state of play of ethical and societal issues in SB.The first section is concerned with the question of a possible definition of SB and the issue of how we could describe and analyze its technological progress with regard to ethical and societal challenges. As one frequent debate of the last few This structured literature analysis aims to map the current, emerging, and predicted future of synthetic biology (SB) by putting the focus on the implied conceptual, societal, and ethical challenges. The central objective of the analysis is to provide an initial systematization of the ethical and socio-scientific debate on SB by structuring and categorizing widely discussed issues within the debate in recent years. Starting with the quest for possible definitions, issues ...

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“…Sometimes this higher context-sensitivity can be beneficial, for example, in the case of trophic containment (Marliere 2009;Torres et al 2016). In these experiments, bacteria are grown in a culture that include molecules (for example, synthetic coenzymes) that do not occur in their natural food chain, and directed evolution is used to tune bacteria to that environment.…”

Section: Environmental Phenotypic Variationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design Under Randomness: How Variation Affects the Engineering of Biological Systems

Ijäs

2018

Biol Theory

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Synthetic biology offers a powerful method to design and construct biological devices for human purposes. Two prominent design methodologies are currently used. Rational design adapts the design methodology of traditional engineering sciences, such as mechanical engineering. Directed evolution, in contrast, models its design principles after natural evolution, as it attempts to design and improve systems by guiding them to evolve in a certain direction. Previous work has argued that the primary difference between these two is the way they treat variation: rational design attempts to suppress it, whilst direct evolution utilizes variation. I argue that this contrast is too simplistic, as it fails to distinguish different types of variation and different phases of design in synthetic biology. I outline three types of variation and show how they influence the construction of synthetic biological systems during the design process. Viewing the two design approaches with these more fine-grained distinctions provides a better understanding of the methodological differences and respective benefits of rational design and directed evolution, and clarifies the constraints and choices that the different design approaches must deal with.

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Synthetic biology approaches to biological containment: pre-emptively tackling potential risks

Cited by 80 publications

References 135 publications

Biosafety and biosecurity

Biosafety and biosecurity

(Re‐)Designing Nature? An Overview and Outlook on the Ethical and Societal Challenges in Synthetic Biology

Design Under Randomness: How Variation Affects the Engineering of Biological Systems

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