How future technology can change our lives

Protecting the climate without restricting the economy, raising meat without killing animals, and curing diseases without taking medicine: For many, these sound like distant future scenarios. In fact, some of this is likely to become reality in the next few years: through the merging of biotech and artificial intelligence (AI).

Behind it is nothing less than a revolution that will change medicine, nutrition and climate protection, argue the futurologist Amy Webb and the geneticist Andrew Hessel in their new book “The Genesis Machine”, which will be published in English on February 15. “We face a future where we don’t need drugs to fight disease. Instead, cells are simply reprogrammed,” Webb recently told Handelsblatt.

In their book, Webb and Hessel not only analyze the opportunities and risks of synthetic biology. They also take a fascinating look into the future – and explain how computers can design, replicate or modify biological systems. This gave people access to cells “to write a new, possibly better biological code”.

Webb has been creating scenarios for technological developments for many years. The futurologist founded the Future Today Institute in New York and advises some of the largest corporations in the world. Forbes magazine recently named Webb one of the 50 women who are changing the world.

Her book “The Big Nine” about tech companies and an AI that benefits society became a bestseller. Andrew Hessel is a microbiologist, genetics expert and founder of several biotech companies.

Their promise is great: Synthetic biology can slow down climate change, cure deadly diseases and make food available for a growing world population, they write: “As with the telephone and the Internet, the social benefits of synthetic biology will go far beyond what we imagine today be able.”

One may find their thesis exaggerated. But numbers prove them right. According to calculations by the authors of the Synthetic Biology Global Market Report 2021, the global market volume for synthetic biology was around ten billion US dollars. By 2025 it will be almost 30 billion US dollars.

Well-known players in the global tech industry are also increasingly discovering synthetic biology. The US software developer Microsoft is working on ways to store and archive data on DNA strands. Customers could upload personal data to the cloud, save it as genetic code and retrieve it as often as they like by copying the corresponding strands of DNA, passing them through a reader and assembling them into a file on the computer.

Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt invested $150 million in a research project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University, in which scientists are using machine learning to analyze biological processes and to prevent, diagnose and treat serious diseases to improve.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates finances numerous biotech companies, including Ginkgo Bioworks, a US company that produces microorganisms for industrial use. Peter Thiel, co-founder of the payment service Paypal and the software provider Palantir, invested in biotech companies, including CRISPR technology.

This is based on the so-called gene scissors, with which scientists can exchange defective genes for intact ones. It is considered to be the most important tool for modifying the human genome and brings the vision closer to being able to cure serious diseases such as cancer and diabetes.

But that’s just the beginning, write Webb and Hessel. They describe how synthetic biology came about and how it answers the pressing questions of the present. “At a time when we are learning to manipulate molecules, create microorganisms and build bioinformatics facilities, a new era of civilization is dawning: the age of biology.”

1. Therapies for serious diseases

The mRNA vaccine against the coronavirus is “only the first of many miracles” that tomorrow’s synthetic biology will bring about. Before Biontech and Moderna developed a corona vaccine, they worked on immunotherapies against cancer.

Biontech founder Ugur Sahin recently expressed optimism that mRNA technology could help in the fight against cancer. The vaccine enables a targeted attack by the immune system on individual cancer cells that are not visible in imaging methods.

Using tumor tissue, the researchers are developing an individual vaccine for each patient, Webb and Hessel also describe. “Both companies have recognized that the most efficient factory for manufacturing medicines is within us. We just have to figure out how to make them usable.”

It is similar with tropical diseases. More than 400,000 people worldwide die from malaria every year. The disease is transmitted by mosquitoes. With the help of gene scissors, the proboscis of the female disease-carrying animals could be modified so that they are no longer able to sting. In Florida, millions of such insects are to be released to curb the spread of the Zika virus. Italian researchers develop genetically modified swarms in the laboratory.

2. Efficient food production

Food production and climate protection are closely related, because the cultivation and breeding of plants and animals consume resources and cause greenhouse gases. Webb and Hessel describe how genetically modified plants require fewer raw materials, yield twice as much and take up less space.

According to the authors, the production of animal-free meat is just as resource-saving. In 2013, researchers at Maastricht University developed the first laboratory-grown hamburger. With a price of more than 300,000 US dollars per piece, it did not make it to market.

Since 2020, researchers in Singapore have been producing artificial chicken nuggets at a lower cost, chicken in Israel and artificial tuna in California. Unlike meat substitutes, cell-based meat cultivation produces muscle tissue that is molecularly similar to animal meat.

Webb and Hessel see the main advantages in this: The production of artificial food reduces the risk of infections, energy consumption and CO2 emissions.

3. Low-emission textiles

The textile industry is also responsible for high greenhouse gas emissions. It causes 1.2 billion tons of CO2 annually – more than all international‧ flights and cruises combined. In addition, there are poor working conditions in the producing countries and non-renewable raw materials. For example, leather could be made from mycelium, i.e. thread-like fungal cells, in the laboratory. Hermès, famous for its expensive leather handbags, has the first products developed using this process.

In addition to measures to reduce CO2 emissions, countries around the world would also have to find solutions to filter the CO2 that has already been emitted from the air. British scientists are developing artificial trees that suck carbon dioxide out of the air.