Drew: Synthetic Biology is an approach to engineering biology. That means it's not metabolic engineering, it's not bioprocess engineering, it's not cancer cell engineering; It means it's an approach to making those sorts of things. It's not the particular application, it's the approach you use to realize that particular application. To say that differently, Synthetic Biology isn't making a specific thing, it's how you make something.

What is biotechnology? As a process it depends on 1. Recombinant DNA, 2. Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), and 3. Automated Sequencing. The last 30 years of biotech depend on these three technologies, which define the process for writing DNA (Recombinant DNA and PCR) and reading it out (Automated Sequencing). This is genetic engineering. So people ask, How is anything you do different than genetic engineering? For it to be different than genetic engineering, there have to be more things on this list.

The first new thing on this list is 4. Automated Construction of DNA. Instead of using PCR and Recombinant DNA to make DNA (analogous to cutting and pasting an essay together), you can just pay someone to print it directly for you. You can be the expert designer of DNA and someone else can be the expert constructor of DNA.

5. Standards: What are we going to make? Maybe I want to make a lot of things quickly, so I need some way of defining how to put things together - that's New!

6. The last thing is Abstraction. Everybody talks about how complicated biology is, and when we engineer DNA today we usually memorize specific DNA sequences and program at the level of nucleotides, like TAATAA - that would be like programming computers with raw binary by hand, manipulating individual bits like 0101110.

What is Synthetic Biology? It builds on genetic engineering - Recombinant DNA, PCR, and Automated Sequencing - by adding three new foundational technologies - Automated Construction, Standards, and Abstraction - these are each as important as the first three, and taken together define a new process for engineering biological systems.

This is called Synthetic Biology. It's a means to an end. Make it easier to build things. Define the things you are building with using standards. Hide biological complexity with abstraction. ...hide

But does it work? Why don't you look at some of the projects - look at some of the projects that are working - looking at the MIT project from last year: they got a genetically encoded inverter off the shelf and because it was a standard inverter they could put it together easily with other parts, they didn't have to memorize the DNA sequences of all the different devices they used... [and successfully engineered two novel reporter devices that produces bannana and wintergreen scents]!

So basically, what these new technologies get you, automated construction, standards, and abstraction, is a more powerful approach to engineering biology! ...hide

So what is a standard biological part, and more specifically what is a Biobrick-standard biological part, and more importantly, why should you care? Well, there are a couple of issues here. What is a part, first off? A part is a level in an Abstraction Hierarchy. A part is defined as a basic biological function that can be encoded as genetic material. So a ribosome binding site (RBS), that's a function; it initiates protein synthesis; you could define the sequence of RNA that defines a ribosome binding site. Ok - basic biological function encoded in genetic material: that's a part.

What's a Standard Part? A Standard Part would be something whose properties had been limited in such a way that the standard might support something, for instance, reliable physical and function composition. So a Standard Biological Part is not the latest bit of sequencing information you just discovered in nature and sequenced; it's not the parts list that the genomicist will get you. Rather, a Standard Biological Part is a part that has been refined and engineered to support... something - and I think the most important thing it could support would be reliable physical and functional composition, just like this nut and bolt. ...hide