[DIYbio] Fourth Industrial revolution and Biotech

When modern biotechnology emerged in the late 1970s, it was first applied in the health sector, with the onset of recombinant DNA. One decade later, the same molecular approaches reached the agricultural and food industries, not without controversy. Finally, biotechnologists started to enrich the capabilities of industrial microbial processes by bringing new genes to live catalysts and modifying their genomes to fit pre-specified production needs. Though such operations were deemed as genetic engineering, in reality the engineering aspects were more metaphor than reality. Instead, what we might call genetic bricolage (i.e. trial-and-error) dominated the field quite successfully for a long time.

However, the arrival of systems biology by the end of the 1990s, and the emergence of synthetic biology in the early 2000s, completely changed the game of designing microorganisms, and even higher living systems, as agents for industrial-scale transformations of feedstocks of diverse origins into valuable products. Microorganisms capable of producing a variety of chemicals of industrial importance, including dicarboxylic acids (succinic acid and adipic acid), diols (1,3-propanediol and 1,4-butanediol), diamines (putrescine and cadaverine) and many others have been developed. Some bacteria and yeast long known by the industry can now be genetically reprogrammed and repurposed, for example to produce lipids serving as biofuel precursors. Even non-natural chemicals such as gasoline and terephthalic acid can now be produced by metabolic engineering.

Furthermore, contemporary biotechnology has produced biomaterials including polysaccharides (microbial cellulose), proteins (spider silk), and even formerly synthetic polymers (polylactate and poly[lactate-co-glycolate]) by fermentation of engineered microorganisms. Some strains have been successfully designed to produce polyhydroxyalkanoates, a family of diverse biopolyesters, for applications in environmentally friendly packaging, medicine and smart materials.