Synthetic biology in the post-corona era

As of May 2020, many countries have started to ease social distancing and working restrictions, indicating encouraging developments in the fight against COVID-19. However, the pandemic is far from over and is already being regarded as one of the most severe global crises of modern times. The world was caught off guard, no matter all scientific, medical, and technological advances of the last decades. We as humanity will have to learn a lot, and we will undoubtedly have to change the way we see infectious diseases in order to be more prepared in the future. But how might the covid-19 crisis affect a scientific area such as synthetic biology, not just in the short-term, but also long-term? 

During the peak of the infection in Europe a few weeks ago, it was also the synthetic biologists that were left wondering how their work would be affected by COVID-19. Quite a few reasoned, especially during the worst days, that they could also support the fight against the virus by donating equipment like masks, or by making materials, kits and protocols accessible to authorities and health systems. Most of the synthetic biology community however was stuck at home, unable to help, let alone to work in the lab. After several weeks in lock-down, life is finally returning step by step to some labs across Europe. But what would have happened if the social distancing and working restrictions had been extended during the summer, or even longer?

Only those working on simulations, analyzing data and with their dry labs in their laptops at the kitchen table were able to continue to work, often with remote access to their institutional servers. During this time, it might have occurred to one or the other wet lab scientist that switching to dry lab work could be a more ‘sustainable’ and robust approach in the long term. After all, internet is almost ubiquitous these days, and new pandemics (and with them the prospect of home office, yet again) are sure to come. PIs, too, are very happy now about dry lab members. However, it is important to keep in mind that synthetic biology is first and foremost an experimental discipline - and one that will always revolve in some way around a wet lab. Only with experimental data you can test and validate hypotheses and progress can be achieved, and thus, a careful ratio between dry and wet lab research teams, scientists, and students has to be maintained and will most likely prevail.

In contrast, this could be a big moment for automation, leading to high levels similar to those we already see in many biotech and synbio companies. Robotics and automated platforms allow to run experiments remotely, facilitating the implementation of social distancing rules. In the near future though, many labs will not have the necessary resources to make such significant investments. For the majority of us other solutions will have to be found. For example, working in shifts to avoid direct contact between colleagues could become the new normal, as has already emerged in many labs. At least the use of face masks and strict hygienic standards will become unavoidable. For now, the merry elbow-to-elbow bench-work times are certainly over.

An aspect that might be particularly affected by this crisis is the research area itself. Many synthetic biologists who were already involved in diagnostic biosensors, automation and protein design are suddenly in the spotlight. These areas are experiencing a major popularity boost. As we reported, especially diagnostic devices using CRISPR have shown promising achievements [1-3]. Development of point of care devices has advanced a lot in a very short time [1, 4-5] and for sure this will be a milestone for scientists who have been working on related subjects or those who decide to address them from now on. We already see here great attempts toward automation of testing [6], but although some of them have been very helpful in many countries, there remain scaling challenges, e.g. if RNA is needed but the extracted amounts are limited, or if crucial processes are slowed down due to low-capacity equipment. The design-build-test cycle, core to synthetic biology, needs all these three phases to be rapid to reach high-throughput results. Undoubtedly, this will be addressed soon, as it has already started with a few works publicly available [6]. Moving from diagnosis to treatment and vaccine, plenty of synthetic biology labs in the world are strongly involved, quickly adapting the application of the methodology and research they do. 

It is important to stress out that, similarly to dry lab work being an integral part of synthetic biology along with work in the wet lab, there is much more to synthetic biology research than only diagnostics. The post-corona future will face many challenges it already faced before - the need to shift to a new bioeconomy, to address sustainability issues and to realize the enormous potential of biology through engineering and rational design. COVID-19 will undoubtedly influence the rationale and motivation of public and private funding agencies and institutions. As a consequence, the decisions made there will also define the direction that academia and particularly synthetic biology will take. But the “war” against COVID-19 that is currently being fought in many countries takes place on familiar ground - biology. And what can synthetic biologists do best other than to modify, design and engineer this precise ground? In the end, synthetic biology might emerge as a winner from this crisis, less exotic and distant, and publicly endorsed for its potential and relevance to our very lives and future.

Literature

1. Broughton, James P., et al. "CRISPR–Cas12-based detection of SARS-CoV-2." Nature Biotechnology (2020): 1-5.

2. Ackerman, Cheri M., et al. "Massively multiplexed nucleic acid detection using Cas13." Nature (2020).

3. Joung, Julia, et al. “Point-of-care testing for COVID-19 using SHERLOCK diagnostics” bioRxiv (2020).

4. Ben-Assa, Nadav, et al. "SARS-CoV-2 On-the-Spot Virus Detection Directly From Patients." medRxiv (2020).

   APA

5. Butler, Daniel J., et al. "Host, Viral, and Environmental Transcriptome Profiles of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)." bioRxiv (2020).

6. Hossain Ayaan, et al. “A Massively Parallel COVID-19 Diagnostic Assay for Simultaneous Testing of 19200 Patient Samples” available online (2020).