The Genesis Machine: Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology
Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel
PublicAffairs (February 2022)

How global leaders can resolve the most serious economic, geopolitical, and social challenges

My undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate studies have been limited almost entirely to the humanities. However, I have developed a serious interest in synthetic biology and am deeply grateful to Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel for making me feel welcome and (yes) valued while accompanying them during an informative journey of discovery.

As they explain, “The Genesis Machine incorporates many different biotechnologies [moving parts], all of which were created to edit and redesign life [in coordination and synchronization]. A series of new biological technologies and techniques, which broadly fall under synthetic biology’s umbrella, will allow us not just to read and edit DNA code but to [begin italics] write it [end italics]. Which means that, soon, we will program living, biological structures as though they were tiny computers.” (Page 5)

Webb and Hessell then add, “Life is becoming programmable, and synthetic biology makes a bold promise to improve human existence. Our purpose in this book is to help you think through the challenges and opportunities on the horizon. Within the next decade, we will need to make important decisions: whether to program novel viruses to fight diseases, what genetic privacy will look like, who will ‘own’ living organisms, how companies should earn revenue from engineered cells, and how to contain a synthetic organism in a lab.”(Pages 6-7)

Note: Many of the central issues to be considered are suggested on Pages 8-9. For example, consider the first: “Those who can manipulate life can exert control over our food supply, medicines, and the raw materials required for our survival.” The material in The Genesis Machine can help global leaders to resolve economic, geopolitical, and social tensions.

Synthetic biology is bringing together engineers and biologists to design and build novel biomolecular components, networks and pathways, and to use these constructs to rewire and reprogram organisms. These re-engineered organisms will obviously change — in some instances disrupt — our lives over the coming years, leading to cheaper drugs, “green” means by which to fuel our cars, and targeted therapies for attacking “superbugs’ and diseases, such as cancer. The de novo engineering of genetic circuits, biological modules and synthetic pathways is beginning to address these crucial problems and is being used in related practical applications.

These are among the dozens of passages of greatest interest and value to me, also listed to suggest the scope of Webb and Hessel’s coverage:

o Introduction: Should Life Be a Game of Chance? (Pages 1-10)
o Recombinant DNA (19-20 and 248-252)
o The Factory of Life (22-26)
o Sequencing of genome (29-46)
o John Craig Venter (31-32, 35-43, 45-46, 106-107, and 147-149)

o George Church (69-77 and 75-80)
o Bioeconomy (95-99, 253-254, & 267-269)
o Biological Age (109-122 and 131-13e5)
o Genetically engineered organisms (GMOs) 124-125, 137-138, 155-156, 178-179, 182-183, and 186-187
o Risks associated with synthetic biology (137-141

o Chinese Communist Party (140-141
o Bioweapons/counterweapons (latter 142-143 and former 260-262)
o DYO kits for CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) 153-154 & 156-158
o Stifling of innovation (158-161)
o Golden Rice (170-!88)

o Halting of aging (177-181)
o Greenpeace (178-179, 182-183, and 185-186)
o Synthetic biology (205-213,
o Future of food culture (215-223)
o Colony Prize (227-236)

I agree with Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel: “If we can develop our thinking and strategy on synthetic biology today, we will be closer to solutions for the immediate and long-term existential challenges posed by climate change, global food insecurity, and human longevity.” They keep the “bold promise” quoted earlier while making a contribution to global thought leadership of incalculable value. Bravo!

I highly recommend other sources that have also been of great interest to me, listed in chrono order:

The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins (1976)

The Gene: An Intimate History (2016)
Siddhartha Mukherjee

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes (2018)
Adam Rutherford

Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past (2019)
David Reich