I spent the day at the MaRS Centre in Toronto at Engineering the Future: Synthetic Biology. There were some blue ribbon speakers talking about synthetic biology from the science perspective during the day and in the evening a public forum that looked at a few basics then moved into the societal aspects of this emerging science.
So what exactly is synthetic biology anyway?

Here are just a few of the definitions tossed around in the slides that came up behind the podium:

“Synthetic Biology is a new approach to engineering biology, with an emphasis on technologies to write DNA. Recent advances make the de novo chemical synthesis of long DNA polymers routine and precise. Foundational work, including the standardization of DNA-encoded parts and devices, enables them to be combined to create programs to control cells. With the development of this technology, there is a concurrent effort to address legal, social and ethical issues.”

Source: Synthetic Biology 4.0 Conference, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, October 2008

“Synthetic biology aims to design and build new biological parts and systems or to modify existing ones to carry out novel tasks.”

Source: Note from the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology

“Synthetic biology is the engineering of biological components and systems that do not exist in nature and the re-engineering of existing biological elements; it is determined on the intentional design of artificial biological systems, rather than on the understanding of natural biology.”

Source: SYNBIOLOGY Project


“Synthetic biology is a maturing scientific discipline that combines science and engineering in order to design and build novel biological functions and systems. This includes the design and construction of new biological parts, devices, and systems (e.g., tumor-seeking microbes for cancer treatment), as well as the re-design of existing, natural biological systems for useful purposes (e.g., photosynthetic systems to produce energy).

Source: SynBERC


“Synthetic biology is a) the design and construction of new biological parts, devices and systems and b) the re-design of existing natural biological systems for useful purposes.”

Source: Synthetic Biology.org


“Synthetic biology is a new area of biological research that combines science and engineering in order to design and build ("synthesize") novel biological functions and systems.”

Source: Wikipedia

( thanks to Kimberely Riley at the Ontario Genomics Institute for sharing the definitions )

Gives you a lot of choices doesn't it?

And while you're thinking about it here are a few images from the day. I've got some video from the public event as well and will post it as soon as possible.