 Synthetic biology is a young science. While it may feel like a foreign concept, chances are you've already encountered the fundamentals of it in your everyday life, from plant-based burgers to sourdough bread. In the very near future, this science will make the leap from engineering everyday things to creating cells that take instructions and can edit the human body. The implications of this new science will literally change life as we know it, but how do we ensure these changes are for the better? Life is becoming programmable. Now, what might we do with this emerging technology? Well, the answer is a lot. It's not somewhere off in the distant future, it's now. And there's not a single industry that bioengineering will not at some point touch. So what exactly is synthetic biology? Amy Webb, futurist, author and assistant professor at New York University, explains how the science works. How can we navigate the potential as well as the potential perils that come with being able to program the living world? Here's what you need to know about synthetic biology. This is an emerging field of science that's roughly 10 years old. And the point of synthetic biology is to see if we can harness what already exists in nature, understand it at a molecular or a code level, engineer or re-engineer organisms to have new or improved purposes. Life is becoming programmable, which means that just as computers speak in the language of ones and zeros and can be programmed, life speaks in the letters of ATCG and it can similarly be programmed just as we program code on a bunch of computers. So, you can think of this as combining the fields of traditional engineering and computer science and even artificial intelligence and other areas of biology. Programming life sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, but synthetic biology is already being used in industries ranging from agriculture to healthcare. The mRNA vaccines used to fight COVID are one such innovation. Messenger RNA vaccines are really amazing because what they do is send a new set of instructions to your body. And in the case of COVID, those instructions said, hey, look out for this spiky-looking thing that's really dangerous. Attack it, change the code of it and then get out. So it wasn't an attenuated virus as are contained in other types of vaccines. So what does the future hold for such a quickly evolving science and what could we use it for? Imagine a future in which a fast-fashion retailer that currently sells very cheap clothing that relies on a lot of intensive resources and a challenging and complicated supply chain. What if you could buy a t-shirt for $3, wear it twice and never wash it? What if your clothes came with an expiration date and they were intended to turn into compost? What's really interesting about this is that this form of creating new clothing would be less resource-intensive, require less water, require less human capital, and also would result in less waste. So if we think of carbon dioxide as another example, what if we could take the excessive amounts of CO2 currently plaguing us and turn that CO2 into food that could be eaten? There are already some researchers working on this very project and in fact have created food out of thin air. It's taking the CO2 as a feedstock and translating that into a type of product that could be made to consume. They've already done this. There are some noodles that look a lot like Japanese soba noodles that were simply made out of CO2. It's a different way of thinking about something that exists and is totally commonplace. To me that's really great analogy for what the future looks like. It's taking what we already have and re-perceiving it. Just as this technology might revolutionize all facets of our lives, it could also bring a host of risks, some that are difficult for us to even comprehend right now. One of those has to do with a new form of cyber-bio-malware. There was a case where a scientist sent out a nine biological code to another place to have it sort of printed so that he could get that material back in the mail. I know that sounds super sci-fi, but that's kind of how the field works right now. Nothing very special about it. However, there was something called a man-in-the-middle attack. This is a pretty normal cyber attack that happens in other places. In this case, it happened in synthetic biology. And somebody was able to intercept that new genetic code when it got sent out. And what left the lab as a totally innocuous genetic material was sent potentially back as a deadly pathogen. A high-security lab might be totally locked down in terms of hazardous materials, but a lot of IT departments don't update their software very often. People are using out-of-date browsers, and that creates new, terrifying vulnerabilities. One of the biggest risks has to do with dual use, meaning sometimes technologists, scientists, they create something that has really beneficial purposes, but if used in a way that they weren't intended to be used, can turn into something incredibly deadly. And, you know, that the case is true when it comes to something like engineered biology. Synthetic biology's increasing presence and capacity to do good, as well as harm, means there are conversations we need to have now so we're prepared and to make sure that this technology doesn't further entrench the divisions and inequalities of today. You know, there are lots of other types of issues we ought to be talking about. If we can engineer people at some point to be more resistant to certain disease, you know, that's probably a good thing, but will everybody have that same level of resistance? Meaning, are we going to democratize this technology and make it freely or easily acceptable and available to everybody? Because if the answer is no, then we wind up with a new type of digital divide in a way, a new type of genetic divide where we have genetic haves and genetic have-nots. Engineering life takes science fiction to a whole new level. Synthetic biology's advanced tech means it's possible to create life that isn't organic, which leads us to ask, what is a living thing? We live now in a world in which a new type of life exists whose parents were not people or mammals or other living organisms, the parents were computers and the scientists entering code into those computers. Now it's teeny tiny, it lives so small that you would need a microscope to see it, but it's been created. So it does beg the question, what is life? What is alive? These seem like somewhat philosophical discussions to have, but they're important to have because the answers intersect with religion, with our personal beliefs and our values, as well as things like rules and regulations of a country and other things like economics. So I get that people are concerned, but this technology is already here. It's not somewhere off in the distant future, it's now. And there's not a single industry that bioengineering will not at some point touch. Every single person on this planet will at some point encounter everything that I've been talking about. So now is the time to have the conversations about ethics, about morals, about guardrails, about restrictions, about geo-economics, and about multilateral agreements. Frameworks are needed because they don't yet exist. They do with bio weapons. You know, when we're talking about something like this type of biotech, we're going to need global collaboration because biology has a tendency to carry on regardless of what we want it to do. So having these conversations isn't really a waste of time, it's an effort towards potentially embracing this technology for the betterment of all.