Scientists Hold Secret Meeting to Consider Creating a Synthetic Human Genome
Scientists are now contemplating the creation of a synthetic human genome, meaning they would use chemicals to manufacture all the DNA contained in human chromosomes.
The prospect is spurring both intrigue and concern in the life sciences community, because it might be possible — if someone were able to create a totally artificial genome — to implant that genome into embryos and create human beings without parents.
While the project is still in the idea phase, and also involves efforts to improve DNA synthesis in general, it was discussed at a closed-door meeting at Harvard Medical School in Boston on Tuesday. The roughly 150 attendees were told not to contact the media or to tweet about the meeting.
Organizers said the project in some ways would be a follow-up to the original Human Genome Project, which was aimed at reading the sequence of the three billion chemical letters in the DNA blueprint of human life. The new project, by contrast, would involve not reading, but rather writing the human genome — synthesizing all three billion units from chemicals.
But such an attempt would raise numerous ethical issues. Could scientists create humans with certain kinds of traits, perhaps people born and bred to be soldiers? Or might it be possible to make copies of specific people?
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“Would it be O.K. to sequence and then synthesize Einstein’s genome?” Drew Endy, a bioengineer at Stanford and Laurie Zoloth, a bioethicist at Northwestern University, wrote in an essay criticizing the proposed project. “If so, how many Einstein genomes would it be O.K. to make and install in cells, and who would get to make and control these cells?”
Scientists and ethicists are already raising concerns about using new gene-editing techniques that could change individual traits in embryos. But it would be possible to make much more extensive changes by synthesizing an entire genome.
Professor Zoloth said in an interview that the project could be risky without any well-defined benefit. She also criticized the surreptitious meeting. “It is O.K. to have meetings that are private, but it has not been characteristic of the field to have meetings that are secret in addition to being private.”
George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and one of the organizers of the proposed project, said the characterization was a misunderstanding, and that in reality the project was aimed more generally at improving the ability to synthesize long strands of DNA, which could be applied to various types of animals, plants and microbes.
“They’re painting a picture which I don’t think represents the project,” Dr. Church said in an interview. “If that were the project, I’d be running away from it.”
The project was initially called HGP2: The Human Genome Synthesis Project, with HGP referring to the Human Genome Project. An invitation to the meeting at Harvard said that the primary goal “would be to synthesize a complete human genome in a cell line within a period of ten years.”
George Church, one of the organizers of the proposed project, at his lab at Harvard Medical School in 2013. Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters But by the time the meeting was held, the name had been changed to “HGP-Write: Testing Large Synthetic Genomes in Cells.”
The original name had been proposed as a headline-grabbing aspirational goal, like landing on the moon, because that would be the best way to galvanize the scientific community.
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Dr. Church said the meeting was closed to the press, and people were asked not to tweet because the project organizers, in an attempt to be transparent, had submitted a paper to a scientific journal. They were therefore not supposed to discuss the idea publicly before publication.
The project does not yet have funding, Dr. Church said, though various companies and foundations would be invited to contribute and some have indicated interest. The federal government will also be asked.
Besides Dr. Church, the organizers of the project include Jef Boeke, director of the institute for systems genetics at NYU Langone Medical Center; Andrew Hessel, a self-described futurist who works in the bio/nano research group at the Bay Area software company Autodesk, and Nancy J. Kelley, who makes a business of planning and launching projects.
Scientists and companies can now change the DNA in cells, for example by adding foreign genes or changing the letters in the existing genes. This technique is routinely used to make drugs, such as insulin for diabetes, inside genetically modified cells, as well as to make genetically modified crops.
But synthesizing a gene, or an entire genome, would provide the opportunity to make even more extensive changes in DNA. The idea is similar to changing a document. If only minor fixes are needed, it is easier to change a word here or there. But if extensive changes are needed, it becomes easier to create a new document from scratch.
Right now, synthesizing DNA from chemicals is difficult and error-prone. Existing techniques can reliably make strands that are only about 200 or 250 bases long, with the bases being the chemical units in DNA. Even a single gene can be thousands of bases long. To synthesize one of those, multiple 200-unit segments have to be manufactured and spliced together.
But the cost and capabilities are improving. “These are on exponential curves that are so much faster than Moore’s law,” Dr. Church said, referring to an observation about how rapidly computing power improves.
J. Craig Venter, the maverick genetic scientist, synthesized a bacterial genomeconsisting of about a million base pairs and was mainly a copy of an existing genome. More recently Dr. Venter and his team synthesized a more original bacterial genome, about 500,000 base pairs long.
Dr. Church said a group with which he is involved is close to synthesizing the entire four-million-base genome of the E. coli bacterium. He said it might be possible to synthesize an entire human genome within a decade, though that job at first would cost tens of thousands of dollars.
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Dr. Endy of Stanford, who is an expert in synthetic biology, which involves engineering life, said the cost of synthesizing genes has plummeted from $4 per base pair, or letter, in 2003 to 3 cents now, but even at that rate, the cost for 3 billion letters would be $90 million. He said if costs continued to decline at the same pace, that figure could reach $100,000 in 20 years. |
