Work has begun on something once-unthinkable: creating human DNA from scratch.
Artificial DNA has long been an ethical minefield, with fears of a generation of ‘designer babies’ with pick ‘n’ mix traits and super soldiers.
But a group of researchers who have been given £10million by the world’s largest medical charity, Wellcome, see things differently.
Artificial human DNA, or synthetic DNA (synDNA), would be made without biological parents by instead using chemicals.
SynHG (Synthetic Human Genome) researchers won’t create artificial life but instead use test tubes and Petri dishes to figure out how humans can make the code of life.
How will the scientists make artificial DNA?
Everything that makes humans human is stored in our DNA, microscopic strands of molecules in our cells.
The smaller chemicals that make DNA are written in a four-letter alphabet – A, G, C and T. Segments of these letters are called genes, which are spread across 23 pairs of wormlike chromosomes.
Hunting down even a single gene once took a scientist their entire career, but the Human Genome Project in 2013 decoded all three billion letters that make up a typical strand of DNA.
Genetic code acts as job descriptions for cells, so the SynHG scientists want to engineer cells to have specific functions. This is different from gene editing, where DNA is cut apart and stitched back together.
Tom Ellis, a bioengineer who is involved in SynHG, told Metro that assembling synthetic DNA isn’t something that can be done overnight.
‘We’re just setting the wheels turning for a future technology, which will take years to deliver,’ the professor of synthetic genome engineering at Imperial College London said.
He added: ‘For now, we are going to do a small part of the genome by showing we can combine bits of human DNA and bits of computer-written, chemically synthesised DNA into regions of a human chromosome and get it functioning in isolated human cells in a research lab.
‘This will require us to clone DNA pieces in bacteria and yeast cells, and knit them together carefully before large DNA pieces are brought into human cells and swapped into the genome and checked that they function.’
He added that if all goes to plan, the technique could revolutionise cancer treatments.
One way to treat cancer is T cell therapy, where a patient’s T cells, a type of immune cell, are reprogrammed to help fight the disease.
Professor Ellis said: ‘One can imagine that 10 years from now that using synthetic chromosomes would be a great way to make a high-efficiency immune cell therapy for treating cancer with a much better safety profile than the cells we currently use for things like T-cell therapies – one of our best new weapons against cancers.’
What are the ethics of making synthetic DNA?
But the idea of humanity intervening in its own evolution has not gone without controversy.
Some critics have said that if synthetic DNA is used to treat disease, it must be accessible to all, regardless of income.
Similar concerns were expressed by researchers from the University of Manchester behind the first-ever ethical analysis of artificial human DNA.
Crafting DNA without the need for parents means it could be unclear who ‘owns’ the genetic material, they said. As the technique would make heritable changes to the genome, it’s murky if it could be used with the content of the person ultimately living with the artificial DNA.
They wrote: ‘These possibilities may call for a rethink about the way we understand genetic identity and privacy. Should it turn out that a person’s genome has been “printed” using synDNA techniques, has that person thereby been morally wronged – and if so, in what way?
‘Is it, or should it be, a crime to “reproduce” a person’s genome in this way?’
Professor Iain Brassington from The University of Manchester, one of the analysis’s co-authors, however, isn’t that worried about SynHG.
‘Any new technology will raise ethical questions, but there’s nothing enormously worrying about this one in principle,’ he told Metro.
‘There are potentially huge benefits to be had in terms of understanding basic questions about human biology and disease, and, based on that understanding, developing treatments that could tackle illnesses with high morbidity and mortality.
‘Making a whole human genome from scratch would be a gargantuan feat: there are simply too many genes there for it to be a practical possibility.’
Don’t worry about mail-order designer babies being sold anytime soon, either, Professor Brassington said.
‘If that term is taken widely enough as to cover babies where we’ve counteracted a life-shortening illness, then I think we could bite the bullet,’ he said.
‘If it’s meant to raise the spectre of parents choosing particular characteristics for their children – perhaps by copying and inserting genes carried by a particular celebrity, or something like that – we’re definitely into the realms of fantasy.’
Professor Brassington said that any new technology comes with a lot of kinks to iron out, something regulators will take into account.
‘But we shouldn’t be scared of the technology; it promises benefits that are there for the taking,’ he added.
Professor Ellis stressed that the SynHG team is working closely with an ethical advisor throughout the years-long project.
There are ‘very few immediate applications and very few immediate ethical risks’ with the research right now, he said.
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