When life becomes an industry: jackpot or chaos?

The rise of altern­at­ives to anim­al pro­teins, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of start-ups exploit­ing pre­ci­sion fer­ment­a­tion¹. to pro­duce ingredi­ents identic­al to to their anim­al-based coun­ter­parts, and the growth of loc­al biore­finery pro­jects, all point to a tan­gible trans­form­a­tion with­in the bio­tech­no­logy sec­tor.
 
Resources alloc­ated to innov­a­tion in fer­ment­a­tion and bio-pre­ser­va­tion increased in 2024, with calls for pro­pos­als and pub­lic-private invest­ments focus­ing on more effi­cient and sus­tain­able indus­tri­al pro­cesses². At the same time, spe­cial­ist journ­als note that so-called “pre­ci­sion” fer­ment­a­tion tech­niques are revolu­tion­ising the pro­duc­tion of food ingredi­ents and estab­lish­ing them­selves as a driver of innov­a­tion cap­able of trans­form­ing the agri-food sec­tor in the years to come³.
 
Emer­ging in the early 2000s, syn­thet­ic bio­logy refers to the ration­al engin­eer­ing of bio­lo­gic­al sys­tems that goes bey­ond the incre­ment­al optim­isa­tion of tra­di­tion­al bio­tech­no­lo­gies. It is based on prin­ciples of engin­eer­ing, stand­ard­isa­tion, mod­u­lar­ity and the sep­ar­a­tion of design and man­u­fac­tur­ing phases, made pos­sible by advances such as high-through­put DNA sequen­cing, auto­mated DNA syn­thes­is, digit­al mod­el­ling, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and labor­at­ory auto­ma­tion.
 
The aim is to con­struct organ­isms or bio­lo­gic­al mod­ules that per­form spe­cif­ic func­tions in a pre­dict­able man­ner, pav­ing the way for new bio­mass-derived raw mater­i­als, biore­act­or-based pro­duc­tion units and value chains reor­gan­ised around liv­ing organ­isms rather than fossil resources⁴.

François Kepes has been at the heart of these devel­op­ments for more than twenty years. A cell bio­lo­gist and bio­tech­no­lo­gist, and a mem­ber of the Académie des Tech­no­lo­gies and the Académie d’Agriculture de France, he has helped to shape the field of sys­tems and syn­thet­ic bio­logy in France and Europe. His work focuses in par­tic­u­lar on the mod­el­ling of com­plex bio­lo­gic­al sys­tems and on syn­thet­ic bio­logy. In 2011, he pub­lished the book “La Bio­lo­gie de syn­thèse plus forte que la nature ?” (Is Syn­thet­ic Bio­logy Stronger than Nature?), in which he ana­lyses the sci­entif­ic found­a­tions, tech­no­lo­gic­al ambi­tions and indus­tri­al implic­a­tions of this dis­cip­line. He has also authored sev­er­al works on the sci­entif­ic and eco­nom­ic dimen­sions of syn­thet­ic bio­logy⁵, elu­cid­at­ing the con­di­tions for its large-scale deployment.

TRUE

Syn­thet­ic bio­logy is the ration­al engin­eer­ing of bio­logy. The ambi­tion of this field, which emerged in 2004, is to ration­ally design and con­struct, in a stand­ard­ised man­ner, new sys­tems inspired by bio­logy or based on its com­pon­ents. Con­struct­ing a bio­lo­gic­al sys­tem that func­tions as inten­ded is a way of ensur­ing that we have under­stood the under­ly­ing phe­nom­ena. In this sense, syn­thet­ic bio­logy helps to advance our under­stand­ing of the liv­ing world. How­ever, engin­eer­ing plays a dom­in­ant role and touches on health, the envir­on­ment, energy and materials.

Such a wide range of applic­a­tions shows us that syn­thet­ic bio­logy does not con­sist of a lim­ited set of indus­tri­al solu­tions, but rather of a broad meth­od­o­lo­gic­al and sci­entif­ic found­a­tion. This found­a­tion is based on engin­eer­ing prin­ciples that enable the “pro­gram­ming” of liv­ing organ­isms: stand­ard­isa­tion, mod­u­lar­ity and the decoup­ling of design and man­u­fac­tur­ing. The con­ven­tion­al logic of incre­ment­al optim­isa­tion is giv­ing way to ration­al design. The drivers of this paradigm shift in life sci­ences tech­no­lo­gies are the large-scale adop­tion of DNA sequen­cing and edit­ing, math­em­at­ic­al mod­el­ling and numer­ic­al sim­u­la­tion, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, and the auto­ma­tion of bio­logy labor­at­or­ies. As with the indus­tri­al revolu­tions of the past, bey­ond pro­ductiv­ity gains, we are wit­ness­ing a paradigm shift: new raw mater­i­als (bio­mass), new factor­ies (biore­act­ors), and new value chains.

The dis­rupt­ive effect on pro­duc­tion stems from the three points high­lighted above: gen­er­i­city, the pro­gram­mab­il­ity of liv­ing organ­isms, and the paradigm shift.

TRUE

Pro­gram­ming liv­ing organ­isms shifts value cre­ation upstream in value chains: the design of pro­duc­tion organ­isms becomes the key to com­pet­it­ive­ness, rather than the pro­cessing of mater­i­als. For example, in the agri-food sec­tor, com­pan­ies such as Impossible Foods use mod­i­fied yeasts, apply­ing the prin­ciples of syn­thet­ic bio­logy to pro­duce haem (the molecule that gives meat its col­our and taste). This sig­ni­fic­antly reduces the envir­on­ment­al foot­print asso­ci­ated with anim­al hus­bandry. This shift in the point of value cre­ation is accom­pan­ied by ver­tic­al integration. 

To cap­ture a large share of the value, com­pan­ies must mas­ter the design of pro­du­cing strains, indus­tri­al-scale fer­ment­a­tion and mar­ket launch. This is why the giants of the chem­ic­al and energy sec­tors are invest­ing heav­ily in these tech­no­lo­gies to avoid being left behind. Nev­er­the­less, this trans­ition also opens the door to loc­al ini­ti­at­ives, centred, for example, on loc­al biore­finer­ies using microor­gan­isms to recov­er waste pro­duced in a giv­en region.

FALSE

Des­pite being rel­at­ively new, some syn­thet­ic bio­logy plat­forms are remin­is­cent of the tech giants. Indeed, they cent­ral­ise vast amounts of data and impress­ive equip­ment. For example, Twist Bios­cience has rap­idly estab­lished itself as a glob­al lead­er in the field of DNA syn­thes­is. With a very dif­fer­ent busi­ness mod­el, Ginkgo Bioworks offers a “cell fact­ory” where, without their own infra­struc­ture, its cli­ents can design and man­u­fac­ture bespoke strains of microor­gan­isms. This con­cen­tra­tion in large plat­forms is explained by the high costs of R&D and the need for access to rap­idly grow­ing databases.

How­ever, unlike com­pu­ta­tion­al pro­cesses, those in syn­thet­ic bio­logy rely heav­ily on phys­ic­al resources. Indeed, the pro­duc­tion of bio­molecules requires logist­ics, floor space, fer­menters and car­bon sources typ­ic­ally derived from bio­mass. This allows for hybrid mod­els, where glob­al plat­forms coex­ist with loc­al play­ers spe­cial­ising in pro­duc­tion or adapt­a­tion to niche markets.

UNCLEAR

The ‘indus­tri­al­isa­tion of life’ shifts the focus of sov­er­eignty to two types of assets: tan­gible (e.g. robot­ic plat­forms and massive biore­act­ors, strain col­lec­tions and biobanks) and intan­gible (pat­en­ted genet­ic sequences, bio­lo­gic­al data­bases, design algorithms). The gov­ernance of intan­gible assets raises issues of intel­lec­tu­al prop­erty, secur­ity and shar­ing. That of tan­gible assets raises indus­tri­al chal­lenges on a par with those of bat­ter­ies. Value cap­ture occurs where the pro­duc­tion capa­city lies, which is not neces­sar­ily where high-qual­ity research is conducted.

FALSE

From a sci­entif­ic per­spect­ive, pilot pro­jects gen­er­ally demon­strate the rel­ev­ance and feas­ib­il­ity of their object­ives, wheth­er these involve, for example, the recov­ery of agri­cul­tur­al waste, car­bon diox­ide sequest­ra­tion or the pro­duc­tion of bio-based molecules. From an eco­nom­ic per­spect­ive, the entire life cycle of the pro­cesses must be taken into account. The crit­ic­al para­met­ers are energy con­sump­tion, the reli­able avail­ab­il­ity of bio­mass, yields of the final product, and the genet­ic sta­bil­ity of the pro­du­cing strains.

The envir­on­ment­al foot­print of syn­thet­ic bio­logy as such has not been the sub­ject of in-depth stud­ies, although it is gen­er­ally accep­ted that its waste is com­postable and that the water con­sumed is recovered at the end of the cycle. In addi­tion to these tech­no­lo­gic­al bar­ri­ers, there are extern­al issues such as reg­u­la­tion, social accept­ab­il­ity, and car­bon and energy prices.

Aicha Fall