May 13, 2009
Synthetic Biology: From Programming Bacteria to Programming Stem Cells
Ron Weiss
Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton
Minutes of the 31st Meeting of the 67th Year
President George Hansen conducted the meeting. Don Edwards led the Invocation. Jock McFarlane read the minutes of the previous meeting. Ted Meth introduced his guest, his wife, Barbara Graham.
A moment of silence was observed in memory of recently deceased member Charles Daves.
It was announced that the next meeting will be on May 20 at the Fields Center. The speaker will be Ron McCoy, the University architect. His talk will be on “Gehry at Princeton: The New Science Library for New Learning.”
The final meeting of the year will be May 27, an “extra” meeting. The speaker will be Prof. Jerome Silbergeld; his talk will be on “Outside In: Chinese –American Contemporary Art,” which is a current exhibit at the Princeton University Art Museum.
The speaker was Assoc. Prof. Ron Weiss, who holds faculty appointments in both the Department of Electrical Engineering and the Biology Department of Princeton University. Dr. Weiss received his doctorate in Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has received several professional honors and awards, and he has written a number of papers in the field of synthetic biology.
Dr. Weiss’ talk was entitled “Synthetic Biology: From Programming Bacteria to Programming Stem Cells.” He began with the notion that came to him (and presumably to others) about twelve years ago, that scientists might be able to program cells, just as they now program computers. However, most of the important work in this field has occurred in the past ten years.
Dr.Weiss began with a schematic diagram of a bacterial cell. Around it he positioned various activities of and influences on the cell, including regulation, synthesis, communication, and the environment. The task of systems-level bio-engineering is to integrate these components, and to construct regulatory networks so that the cells will perform desired tasks in a reliable fashion.
Prof. Weiss noted that our capabilities to use computers to do such tasks have been and are increasing in logarithmic fashion. He used a special vocabulary to develop the concepts of synthetic biology, including such terms as oscillators, repressors, inverters, inducers, promoters, and functional toggle switches. Inducers can modify what goes on inside a cell.
The challenge is to transition from creating or inducing simple modules to the production of more complex systems. The goal is to design and then to build sophisticated biologic systems, so that cells will do what we want them to do. “That’s our fantasy,” he said. But biologic systems usually come with a lot of “noise,” that is, extraneous and undesirable features. But, said Dr. Weiss, we shouldn’t wait until we understand everything before attempting to make progress.
Professor Weiss noted the enormous potential of building new circuits in biological materials, the ability to take basic parts and put them together to build systems. We can now think about cells as programmable entities. Dr. Weiss termed this “the most exciting and potentially influential technology of the century.” And M. I. T.’s Technology Review Magazine has characterized his work as “one of ten emerging technologies that may some day change the world.”
Dr. Weiss asked the question, Why should we want to modify the activity of cells by imposing new capabilities and functions on them? His answer lay in the potential applications of this technology. For example, among the potential applications are tissue engineering, diabetes therapy and management, cancer therapy, and the construction of artificial immune systems. With regard to cancer, for example, a virus might enter a cell and determine whether its growth potential is neoplastic or cancerous, and if so, the virus could kill the cell.
Other applications might be the production of clean energy, or the reduction of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the synthesis of new drugs, and attacking the problem of bacterial resistance to antibiotics.
Among the concepts under study are the construction of regulatory networks, and also communication between cells, that is, enabling cells to receive messages and to talk with each other.
Dr. Weiss dilated on two specific examples. First, the differentiation of embryonic stem cells into specific tissues, such as neurons (nerve cells), muscle cells, pancreas, or fat. If stem cells could be induced to form nerve tissue, there might be the possibility of providing a repair of a spinal cord severed in an auto accident or as a result of a battle injury. This remains a task for the future, as large scale differentiation of stem cells into nerve tissue has not yet been accomplished.
A second example had to do with type one diabetes, in which an auto-immune process damages or destroys the beta cells of the pancreatic islets, so that little or no insulin is produced. If stem cells can be induced to form endoderm and then further induced to form insulin-producing beta cells, then an individual suffering from diabetes might have an available internal source of insulin.
In summary, the future possibilities of this approach, that is, of programming cells so that they either differentiate into desired tissues or produce new and desired functions or cell products, seem enormous and potentially very useful. However, so far as I could ascertain, these beneficial applications remain for now as goals rather than actual achievements
Respectfully submitted,
Harvey Rothberg
A moment of silence was observed in memory of recently deceased member Charles Daves.
It was announced that the next meeting will be on May 20 at the Fields Center. The speaker will be Ron McCoy, the University architect. His talk will be on “Gehry at Princeton: The New Science Library for New Learning.”
The final meeting of the year will be May 27, an “extra” meeting. The speaker will be Prof. Jerome Silbergeld; his talk will be on “Outside In: Chinese –American Contemporary Art,” which is a current exhibit at the Princeton University Art Museum.
The speaker was Assoc. Prof. Ron Weiss, who holds faculty appointments in both the Department of Electrical Engineering and the Biology Department of Princeton University. Dr. Weiss received his doctorate in Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has received several professional honors and awards, and he has written a number of papers in the field of synthetic biology.
Dr. Weiss’ talk was entitled “Synthetic Biology: From Programming Bacteria to Programming Stem Cells.” He began with the notion that came to him (and presumably to others) about twelve years ago, that scientists might be able to program cells, just as they now program computers. However, most of the important work in this field has occurred in the past ten years.
Dr.Weiss began with a schematic diagram of a bacterial cell. Around it he positioned various activities of and influences on the cell, including regulation, synthesis, communication, and the environment. The task of systems-level bio-engineering is to integrate these components, and to construct regulatory networks so that the cells will perform desired tasks in a reliable fashion.
Prof. Weiss noted that our capabilities to use computers to do such tasks have been and are increasing in logarithmic fashion. He used a special vocabulary to develop the concepts of synthetic biology, including such terms as oscillators, repressors, inverters, inducers, promoters, and functional toggle switches. Inducers can modify what goes on inside a cell.
The challenge is to transition from creating or inducing simple modules to the production of more complex systems. The goal is to design and then to build sophisticated biologic systems, so that cells will do what we want them to do. “That’s our fantasy,” he said. But biologic systems usually come with a lot of “noise,” that is, extraneous and undesirable features. But, said Dr. Weiss, we shouldn’t wait until we understand everything before attempting to make progress.
Professor Weiss noted the enormous potential of building new circuits in biological materials, the ability to take basic parts and put them together to build systems. We can now think about cells as programmable entities. Dr. Weiss termed this “the most exciting and potentially influential technology of the century.” And M. I. T.’s Technology Review Magazine has characterized his work as “one of ten emerging technologies that may some day change the world.”
Dr. Weiss asked the question, Why should we want to modify the activity of cells by imposing new capabilities and functions on them? His answer lay in the potential applications of this technology. For example, among the potential applications are tissue engineering, diabetes therapy and management, cancer therapy, and the construction of artificial immune systems. With regard to cancer, for example, a virus might enter a cell and determine whether its growth potential is neoplastic or cancerous, and if so, the virus could kill the cell.
Other applications might be the production of clean energy, or the reduction of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the synthesis of new drugs, and attacking the problem of bacterial resistance to antibiotics.
Among the concepts under study are the construction of regulatory networks, and also communication between cells, that is, enabling cells to receive messages and to talk with each other.
Dr. Weiss dilated on two specific examples. First, the differentiation of embryonic stem cells into specific tissues, such as neurons (nerve cells), muscle cells, pancreas, or fat. If stem cells could be induced to form nerve tissue, there might be the possibility of providing a repair of a spinal cord severed in an auto accident or as a result of a battle injury. This remains a task for the future, as large scale differentiation of stem cells into nerve tissue has not yet been accomplished.
A second example had to do with type one diabetes, in which an auto-immune process damages or destroys the beta cells of the pancreatic islets, so that little or no insulin is produced. If stem cells can be induced to form endoderm and then further induced to form insulin-producing beta cells, then an individual suffering from diabetes might have an available internal source of insulin.
In summary, the future possibilities of this approach, that is, of programming cells so that they either differentiate into desired tissues or produce new and desired functions or cell products, seem enormous and potentially very useful. However, so far as I could ascertain, these beneficial applications remain for now as goals rather than actual achievements
Respectfully submitted,
Harvey Rothberg