Human beings also want to be the “Creators”.
Human beings have always been difficult to suppress the inner impulses to be the “Creators” while exploring the origin of life. One hundred years ago, the French chemist Stephane Leduc was inspired by synthetic organic chemistry and then became the first person to create the word “synthetic biology.” Along with the development of genomics , systematic biology and some other relevant disciplines, researches on synthetic biology are constantly forward.
As the name suggests, synthetic biology is to redesign and transform the current biological system by using some synthetic methods. Furthermore, the progresses of genomics and related disciplines have promoted the advance of synthetic biology to a large degree. To be more general, genomics brings massive genetic information and high-throughput genomic technologies, which leads scientific researches into the era of systematic and synthetic biology. And it makes a revolutionary effect on industrial biotechnology as well.
As a professor from the University of California, Berkeley, Jay Keasling has said that synthetic biology will probably create a rapid development in modern biotechnology industry 2.0, just like genetic engineering. Professor Chen Guoqiang, from the School of Life Science of Tsinghua University, also pointed out that synthetic biology has shown a way for the future that can improve the potential competitiveness of industrial biotechnology, reduce the cost of biopharmaceuticals and create the possibility of modified organisms. Meanwhile, under the support of venture investment, a group of small and medium-sized biotech companies have begun to create a large number of new platfoem chemicals, as well as some biosynthetic methods of pharmaceutical compounds. In addition, they have also developed some appropriate bio-manufacturing technologies.
Certainly, it is true that China has also payed an important role in such issue. In this way, various Chinese goverment departments should concern more about the development of synthetic biology. With the support from a series of sectors, the development of synthetic biology will step into a new era. However, diverse problems and difficulties still exist because people know little about the biological mechanisms.
To be brief, despite of a large number of challenges, biological field has gained great achievements in recent years. Additionally, compared with other technologies, such field also possesses huge potential. Taking into account of all the current realities, many experts still hold the opinion that it is possible to make greater success in the realm of synthetic biology.