One of my interests and a frequent subject of my art is the human relationship to the natural world and this is a subject I have been following for a while now—Synthetic Biology being a more recent development that adds another layer to this existential (and/or ontological?) question: What is Natural and what is Synthetic (and does it matter)? I find the most interesting place to examine is where the two become unclear and synthetic biology fits perfectly in that discomfort zone.

The New Yorker article covers the use of synthetic biology to build better ways of dealing with malaria. Many synthetic biologists hope to make off-the-rack components for biology, similar to the components used in the electronics industry. With the concern over such direct manipulation of Nature comes an intense series of “what if” questions about the future of the natural world. Will we be able to engineer new species of domestic pets? Somwhere between a cat and a parrot? Bio-fuels that emit harmless, colored clouds of gas from the vehicles burning them (just because)? Will we be able to fuse biology to our electro-mechanical present, creating biological computers of every shape, size and color imaginable? As anxiety inducing as synthetic biology may be, the possibilities seem endlessly exciting and as we head further into a biological future that will be unavoidably altered by the gradual warming of the Earth, we have no choice but to develop this technology with the hope that we can solve some of our current and future needs while being mindful of the dangers of such fundamental power.