Synthetic hormones, genetically modified crops, plastic-eating enzymes. Synthetic biology has the potential to address some big issues including food security, bio-remediation and health care.
Words by Dr Leigh Dayton
From food production to products and services in pharmaceuticals, textiles, fuels, environmental remediation, biomanufacturing, energy and agriculture; synthetic biology (synbio) promises to deliver it all.
No wonder it’s the next big frontier of innovation. Worldwide, the value of synbio materials alone is predicted to be worth US$300 billion by 2040.
In Australia, it’s one of the fastest-growing areas of modern innovation. With appropriate support and investment, Australian synbio could produce $30 billion annually and create over 50,000 new jobs in the same time frame.
While significant challenges exist, Australia has the relevant research excellence to become highly competitive globally.
“It’s on its way. Things are starting to look really good,” said molecular biologist Amy Cain, ARC Future Fellow, Macquarie University Associate Professor, and ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology Investigator.
Genesis of synbio
It all began in 1978 in David Goeddel’s laboratory at Genentech in San Francisco. Using the emerging tools of genetic engineering, his team designed insulin-producing bacteria – and the world noticed. By 1982, the American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly had commercialised its own biosynthetic insulin, reflecting the birth of the new and transformative field of synbio.
Today, synbio combines engineering principles and genetic technology to design, test and build novel cell-based parts, products and systems. It offers attractive problems in applied science and next-generation manufacturing approaches.
It does, however, pose a challenge for engineers accustomed to conventional problems and methodologies.
“Synthetic biology is different from all other types of engineering for two reasons,” said synthetic biologist Dr Claudia Vickers, of the Queensland University of Technology. “Firstly, we reverse engineer the system to understand how the components work. In all other engineering disciplines, we built the system in the first place.
“Secondly, the code we work with, DNA, is inherently mutable. Imagine if the computer code a programmer worked with was capable of changing itself, sometimes unpredictably. That means we have to engineer fail-safes at multiple levels when we are engineering systems.”
Engineers and biologists are doing just that.
Big problems
Australia faces complex problems in increasingly important fields: the environment, food and agriculture, and health.
“I believe synthetic biology has a major role to play in solving these massive issues,” said synthetic biologist Esteban Marcellin, University of Queensland (UQ) Professor and Director of Biosustainability Hub at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology.
“Environmental problems pose the biggest challenges. These include climate change and waste from industrial, mining and municipal activities, not to mention damage from invasive plants and animals.”
Meanwhile, the agricultural sector is pushed to maintain soil health and build the weather-tolerant and pest-resistant crops needed to feed a burgeoning population.
That growing population in turn drives the health sector. Currently, there is strong demand for affordable point-of-care diagnostics, smart vaccines and enhanced cancer therapies.
New products
It may be early days for Australian synbio, “but we’re really getting out there and starting to make the market with novel products and services”, said UQ Professor Peter Gray, Inaugural Director of the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology.
Sydney startup Number 8 Bio, for instance, makes methane-mitigating food additives for livestock. Synbiote, Newera Bio and Uluu redesign polluting products such as textiles and plastics, while Samsara Eco processes plastic waste from Woolworths and Tennis Australia.
“It’s a type of recycling called molecular recycling,” Professor Colin Jackson, Samsara Eco’s Chief Science Officer, said.
“Rather than just melt and reform the bottle – which is essentially how we currently do it – we use enzymes to break the bottle back down to the molecules it was made from in the first place.”
Bayer Biologics is using synbio to develop pest and disease control products, while Cauldron provides fermentation technology to food startups that optimise biological systems to produce specific molecules and materials efficiently.
The ecosystem
Startups such as Cauldron do not exist in a vacuum. They are part of an ecosystem that began self-organising with the establishment of Synthetic Biology Australasia in 2014. The not-for-profit promotes collaboration between industry and academia.
The synbio ecosystem also includes universities, governments, government research organisations, and investment companies.
Much financial support comes from federal programs, but, increasingly, investment companies such as Main Sequence Ventures contribute. Since it was founded in 2017, Main Sequence has invested $1 billion in 51 companies.
“But the ecosystem is often driven by present and former university researchers who implement innovation from the international research community locally,” said Anna Faber, UWA doctoral student and Forrest Research Foundation scholar.
Little wonder that – along with CSIRO and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology – universities kick-started most of the 16 synbio spinouts founded since 2021.
Programs such as UNSW’s Synbio 10X Accelerator train tomorrow’s innovators. And universities host testing and manufacturing facilities like the Genome Foundry at Macquarie and the CSIRO BioFoundry at UQ. “In the last few years, the ecosystem in Australia has grown immensely,” Marcellin said. “It’s very positive and encouraging to see.”
Investment lag
Still, challenges exist. Money, scaling-up and public scepticism top most lists. Research is expensive and Australia lags its peers in investment.
Competition for such scarce funds is tough, especially so for synthetic biologists who compete against researchers using conventional methodology and established facilities. So, without strategic on-going national investment in synbio, Australia would fall behind other leading nations, to its societal and economic disadvantage.
Scaling-up is another critical challenge. Australia is poor at taking ideas from the laboratory to the marketplace, especially in an emerging field with fewer experienced participants.
“But one of the biggest hurdles is scepticism in society because we have not really been very good in communicating what synthetic biology actually does and what we can achieve with it,” Faber said.
Scepticism, when fierce, can push a community to withdraw support – the social license – for research projects in areas like vaccine development, climate change, and genetic engineering.
“This social license to operate is a critical challenge,” Gray said.
Today and tomorrow
Emerging technologies go through phases. Commonly cited is US technology consultant Gartner Inc’s Hype cycle: technology trigger, peak of inflated expectations, trough of disillusionment, slope of enlightenment, and plateau of productivity.
“While it will be challenging to raise capital for a while, we are now advancing along the slope of enlightenment, with the plateau of productivity on the horizon,” Vickers said. “It’s an exciting time for synbio.”
And a time to consider synbio’s long-run impact. According to Gray, “there’s no question we have excellent potential”.
Marcellin added that it is a field that can transform the Australian economy into a bioeconomy.
Startups are already designing and selling bioeconomy-style products. If costs drop and demand grows as predicted, Marcellin’s bioeconomy would likely become a self-sustaining circular economy.
By providing novel, low-cost products and services and out-competing old-fashioned chemical processes and production plants, a circular bioeconomy would strengthen and diversify domestic synbio manufacturing. It would boost supply chain resilience, while continuing to tackle challenges.
Speaking of synbio production facilities, Cain suggested tomorrow’s “mini at-home breweries” could recycle plastics, crank out medicines, or even help with dinner.
“Australia really is one of the top synthetic biology countries in the world.”
This article was originally published in the February 2025 issue of create with the headline “Intelligent design”.
Further reading
