"If you understand it, you can create it," Benner told Discovery News. Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley, for example, have created an organism to produce artemisinic acid, which is used as a malaria medication. It is normally extracted from the Artemisia annua plant. The synthetic variety is expected to be less expensive to produce. "The underlying goal of synthetic biology is to make biology easy to engineer," said Drew Endy, a bioengineer with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "When I want to go build some new biotechnology, whether it makes a food that I can eat or a bio-fuel that I can use in my vehicle, or I have some disease I want to try and cure, I don't want that project to be a research project. I want it to be an engineering project," he said. Related Links: |
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