Three decades after her birth on July 5, 1996, history's most famous sheep, Dolly, lies dissected slowly within a display case at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Her "creation" proved that an adult cell can be reprogrammed to embryonic states, with all developmental potential ahead.
Thus, cellular reprogramming emerged as a new field of research. In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka discovered how to reprogram adult cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (a feat that would earn him the Nobel Prize in 2012), and which has required 20 years of research, trials, and regulatory caution to finally reach the clinic, albeit conditionally. Now, Japan has approved theworld's first two iPS cell-based therapies, aimed at heart failure and Parkinson's.
Biology and clinic feed on concepts that we would expect to find only in science fiction works. In Minnesota, researcher Kate Adamala has built a type of synthetic cell, theSpudCells, capable of growing, feeding, dividing, and even evolving minimally while competing for food with other mutant copies. With only 36 genes (the human genome has about 20,000), the cell is not born, it has been built. It does not yet know how to synthesize its own ribosomes (the protein factories), and it “stops functioning” after a few generations.
To Singapore,engineers have equipped a cockroach with a diving suit, with a flexible shell and a chemical oxygen generator. This allows the insect to breathe and walk underwater for up to three hours. Without the suit, it would not last more than 45 seconds. In fact, these cyborgs are already used in rescues and inspections, and could now cross flooded areas after a catastrophe.
And while synthetic biology invents new life, medicine repurposes what already exists. Genetically modified pigs, with human genes inserted and their own genes removed to avoid rejection, have already providedkidneys and livers to human patients who had no other option. Although the results are still fragile, with chronic rejections and clotting disorders.
None of this happens without friction. Bruce Whitelaw, former director of the Roslin Institute, recalls that Dolly's team was overwhelmed by the media frenzy of 1997. 30 years later, we still lack a reliable system for anticipating the social impact of each new technology before it arrives. Neil Shubin, a paleontologist who this July took over the presidency of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States – at a time of cutbacks and political distrust of science – advocates for a simple idea:connecting science with citizenship, in order to explain it better, sooner, without sacrificing rigor.
A society that loses science loses the future, says Shubin. The future does not arrive on its own: it is worked on, explained, and cared for.
