The future is artificial

The obvious danger of trying to predict the future in science and also allow the prophecy to be put on the Internet is that a few years later one would most likely wish it was never written. Alternatively, the predictions may be stated in such vague ways that they can be interpreted to always fit what actually happens in the future, a technique heavily used by politicians. Many would also say that this is the method used by the famous French doctor and mathematician Nostradamus (1503–1566), enabling him to keep his many believers for centuries. I have decided not to use such tricks and instead face the judge when the time comes. One reason I am not so worried is that I think it is hard to overestimate the pace of progress in the times we are living now. The developments in molecular biology are currently very much driven by new methodologies, and anyone scanning the most prestigious journals will have to admit that even within a single calendar year lots of methods are published that an individual would not even think of. What would be the response in 1975 to someone suggesting to sequence the entire human genome, to produce human growth hormone in E. coli, or to scan the scientific literature for a particular topic in one second? Therefore, if we think a sufficient number of years back (not very long) in time we will see that things we could not even imagine has actually happened. As I see it we now have or can already foresee so many tools available to dissect and manipulate living organisms that I think we can safely say: ‘anything’ will become possible in the future. The problem is therefore more, when exactly will each predictable development become a reality?

At the moment one of my favourite and perhaps too obvious predictions is that we soon will see a boom in the new field of Synthetic Biology. A few years ago it was a rather costly project to synthesize genes. Now it is so cheap that an average scientist can buy his own favourite gene by paying from his or her own pocket. As this is now trivial, and we also know how to link DNA fragments together it will soon also be cheap to make very long stretches of DNA, as a custom‐made service. This development will certainly come, because the synthesis of an entire plasmid was published as early as in 1990 (Mandecki et al., 1990), a synthetic polio‐virus DNA in 2002 (Cello et al., 2002), and synthesis of the entire Mycoplasma genitalium chromosome was recently reported (Gibson et al., 2008).

Does this mean that we can soon make synthetic cats and dogs from scratch? Certainly not soon, but possibly somewhat later! Infectious viruses can already be made, and this alone can lead to enormous impacts in science and on the society. The new viruses may be used beneficially to study viral pathogenesis in model systems or to analyse their surviving capacity in natural environments. Potentially they may also be used by terrorists to create devastating epidemic diseases, and are we really prepared for this very frightening possibility in the near future? Some believe that this will never happen, but I feel that this potential problem should be analysed and discussed much more.

If one moves one level up synthetic bacteria is the next obvious step. This has already been achieved to some extent (see above and Lartigue et al., 2007), but right now it is far from trivial. I cannot see any overwhelming technical obstacles for further progress in this field, so many synthetic bacteria will be soon be created. Potentially they can be used to make super‐bugs for all kinds of specific purposes, ranging from ‘traditional’ cell factories to saving the worlds climate (http://blog.litfuse.com.au/2008/03/15/synthesising‐new‐organisms‐to‐save‐the‐world/), and also perhaps purposely to cause damage to the society, as discussed above for viruses. In the first years to come such synthetic bugs will have to rely heavily on the complex regulatory networks already known to function in existing living organisms, as it appears unrealistic to design completely new and well‐functioning networks from scratch. However, in a longer time‐frame (20 years?) I am convinced that this will also become possible.

If I am going to be really brave I might predict that the developments in Systems and Synthetic Biology will become a major turning point in the history of man. It may (together wit other developments) lead to an understanding and control of fundamental processes such as aging and consciousness. Such breakthroughs would have enormous and obvious impacts on society, and it is hard to see why it should never become possible. Again, it is mostly a matter of when. However, in a five two ten‐years perspective synthetic bugs will dominate and as usual these technologies can be applied both to the benefit and harm of mankind. What generally worries me is that we are getting in control of stronger and stronger forces, such that our traditional ways of thinking about our roles as scientists may soon become outdated. Al Gore has also noticed this by stating that man has become a force of nature. Another prediction is therefore that scientists in the future must even more than in the past think about the consequences of what they are doing. I believe that this will become a major issue in the next 10 years!