The Stanford Emerging Technology Review 2025 (Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology)
2025斯坦福新兴技术评论报告（生物技术与合成生物学部分）
- 关键词：
- 来源：
- Stanford University
- 类型：
- 科技报告
- 语种：
- 英语
- 原文发布日期：
- 2025-02-24
- 摘要：
- KEY TAKEAWAYS• Biotechnology is poised to emerge as a general-purpose technology by which anything bioengineers learn to encode in DNA can be grown whenever and wherever needed— essentially enabling the production of a wide range of products through biological processes across multiple sectors.• The US government is still working to grasp the scale of this bio-opportunity and has relied too heavily on private-sector investment to support the foundational technology innovation needed to unlock and sustain progress.• Biotechnology is one of the most important areas of technological competition between the United States and China, and China is investing considerably more resources. Lacking equivalent efforts domestically, the United States runs the risk of Sputnik-like strategic surprises in biotechnology.OverviewBiotechnology partners with biology to create products and services, like engineering skin microbes to fight cancer or brewing medicines from yeast. This industry, already 5 percent of US GDP, is poised for significant growth. Synthetic biology, a subset of biotechnology focusing on enhancing living systems, relies on DNA sequencing and synthesis. DNA sequencers are machines that read or decode specific DNA molecules, while synthesizers write user-specifi ed sequences of DNA. Rapid progress in these technologies is driving innovation and expanding biotechnology’s potential applications.Biology as a manufacturing process is distributed; leaves do not come from a central production facility but rather grow on trees everywhere. However, commercial biotechnology has become centralized and capital intensive. This contrast suggests a potential paradigm shift toward a more distributed approach in biotechnology, aligning it more closely with nature’s decentralized production model.Synthetic biology merges biology, engineering, and computer science to modify and create living systems, developing novel biological functions served by amino acids, proteins, and cells not found in nature. This fi eld creates reusable biological “parts,” streamlining design processes and reducing the need to start from scratch, thus advancing biotechnology’s capabilities and efficiency.Synthetic biology has applications in medicine, agriculture, manufacturing, and sustainability. DNA and RNA synthesis underlies all mRNA vaccines, including those for COVID-19. Synthetic biology can also cultivate drought-resistant crops and enable cells to be programmed to manufacture medicines or fuel on an agile, distributed basis. Key Developments Distributed biomanufacturing This offers unprecedented production flexibility in both location and timing. Fermentation production sites can be established anywhere with access to sugar and electricity. This approach enables swift responses to sudden demands like disease outbreaks requiring specific medications. Such adaptability revolutionizes manufacturing, making it more efficient and responsive to urgent needs. Biology as a general-purpose technology Currently, biotechnology is used to make medicines, foods, and a narrow range of sustainable materials. But anything whose synthesis can be encoded in DNA could be grown. For example, some bacteria are capable of growing arrays of tiny magnets, and select sea sponges grow glass filaments similar to human-made fiber-optic cables. These and other examples suggest the potential for biology to be recognized as a general-purpose technology that could become the foundation of a more resilient manufacturing base. Biological large language models (BioLLMs) Large language models (LLMs), which are a form of artificial intelligence, have emerged that are being trained on natural DNA, RNA, and protein sequences. Called BioLLMs, they can generate new biologically significant sequences that are helpful points of departure for designing useful proteins.
- 所属专题：
- 173
