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Team:Freiburg/Content/PolicyAndPractices/Interview
From 2014.igem.org
Interview
We want to welcome Dr. Joachim Bolt, who put a special focus of his research to synthetic biology regarding ethical and philosophical as well as security and safety facets. Thank you very much for taking the time to answer some questions.
Which are your personal concerns about safety in synthetic biology? To what extent have scientists to think about biosafety?
To answer this in detail we will have to wait into which direction research develops and which fields of application are exploited. But broadly speaking the high intrusion depth of synthetic biology into the genomes of organisms poses new safety questions.
Why does especially synthetic biology evoke the necessity to address biosafety questions in addition to the ongoing genetic engineering -safety-debate?
This is something which correlates with the depth of intrusion. This means the distance to the original organism is even bigger in synbio than in genetic engineering (größer als wir das von der gentechnik kennen). In genetic engineering there is always the an organism which can be compared (vergleichsorganismus) which is known very well so that it is possible to say the genetically engineered version of this organism will behave in the same ways and only differ in in some minor respects. But when synthetic biology has the realistic vision of a whole new genome being redesigned (am reißbrett entwerfen) and inserted into a bacterial cell the question arises how we can evaluate how this organisms will behave and develop. Here we are lacking reference values and that is a difference to conventional genetic engineering. This is a new level in the respect of biosafety questions.
Often hypothetical scenarios are constructed and used to elucidate safety questions. Can this debate satisfy the reality of research?
when specific research projects are evaluated the general prospect of replacing a whole genome can be neglected, as it is not relevant or doesn’t have to be relevant. The assessment of definite research projects is really depending on details and in the case of doubt there are already many standards (Rahmen und vorgaben) and percepts which can be applied to address safety. But there are also research projects which are uncritical in terms of safety questions. Nevertheless it is important to keep an eye on future developments in research. Here also scientists have to be aware of safety questions that may arise not only from what they are doing right now but also regarding future steps of their research. This is a gradual process but we have to be always one step ahead of what currently happens.
