The power of synthetic biology for bioproduction, remediation and pollution control
Name
embr.201745658.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
369.29 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
b03b80d8c57fd91f679e771c05fa2f46
Author(s)
De Lorenzo, Victor
Prather, Kristala L
Chen, Guo‐Qiang
O'Day, Elizabeth
Kameke, Conrad
Oyarzún, Diego A
Hosta‐Rigau, Leticia
Alsafar, Habiba
Cao, Cong
Ji, Weizhi
Alternative Title
The UN's Sustainable Development Goals will inevitably require the application of molecular biology and biotechnology on a global scale
Date Issued
March 2018
Publisher
EMBO
Citation
Lorenzo, Víctor, et al. “The Power of Synthetic Biology for Bioproduction, Remediation and Pollution Control: The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals Will Inevitably Require the Application of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology on a Global Scale.” EMBO Reports 19, 4 (April 2018). © 2018 The Authors
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The agenda of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1 challenges the synthetic biology community—and the life sciences as a whole—to develop transformative technologies that help to protect, even expand our planet's habitability. While modern tools for genome editing already benefit applications in health and agriculture, sustainability also asks for a dramatic transformation of our use of natural resources. The challenge is not just to limit and, wherever possible revert emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases, but also to replace environmentally costly processes based on fossil fuels with bio‐based sustainable alternatives. This task is not exclusively a scientific and technical one but will also require guidelines and regulations for the development and large‐scale deployment of this new type of bio‐based production. Some recent advances that can (or soon could) enable us to make progress in these areas—and several possible governance principles—need to be addressed.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.15252/embr.201745658
