Synthetic Biology - History

History

The term "synthetic biology" has a history spanning the twentieth century. The first use was in Stéphane Leducs’s publication of « Théorie physico-chimique de la vie et générations spontanées » (1910) and « La Biologie Synthétique » (1912). In 1974, the Polish geneticist Wacław Szybalski used the term "synthetic biology", writing:

Let me now comment on the question "what next". Up to now we are working on the descriptive phase of molecular biology. ... But the real challenge will start when we enter the synthetic biology phase of research in our field. We will then devise new control elements and add these new modules to the existing genomes or build up wholly new genomes. This would be a field with the unlimited expansion potential and hardly any limitations to building "new better control circuits" and ..... finally other "synthetic" organisms, like a "new better mouse". ... I am not concerned that we will run out of exciting and novel ideas, ... in the synthetic biology, in general.

When in 1978 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Arber, Nathans and Smith for the discovery of restriction enzymes, Wacław Szybalski wrote in an editorial comment in the journal Gene:

The work on restriction nucleases not only permits us easily to construct recombinant DNA molecules and to analyze individual genes, but also has led us into the new era of synthetic biology where not only existing genes are described and analyzed but also new gene arrangements can be constructed and evaluated.