at tbx 2022 I gave this talk about synthetic biology [Music] start with story it was a couple of months ago I got a text from my mother Peter can I call you so I know something is wrong my father was cycling uphill and he had little headwinds and then as a sudden he fainted and fell on the ground blood everywhere but he's very stubborn I can say that it's because I'm his son and he decided oh I can just walk home or cycle home so he entered the the house and my mother saw him what has happened we should go to see the general practitioner and he's uh it's okay don't worry but they decided to go to the gp's office and they went there and the general practitioner said I'm going to call an ambulance so they went to the hospital did all kinds of tests on my father and the cardiologist said you have free currently by uh arteries surrounding your heart two of the three are completely clogged and one is performing at 25 percent so my father an event surgery a bypass operation and that really made me think because my grandfather the father of my father he passed away due to an heart attack and that made me think about my own health what are my own risks and predispositions and even further it made me realize what about hida because I'm now the Father the father of Hira he's a one-year-old on the left by the way and it made me think what is the risks and the health and the benefits that hitter has because as a kind of introduction you get your half of your DNA from your father and half of your DNA from your mother and they get it from their fathers and mothers so DNA is almost in every cell of our body in your body and my body but not only not only humans also in animals and plants and bacteria and we are now learning more and more about the power of genetics and also a couple of years ago I did a genetic test myself raise your hand if you also did a commercial genetic test yourself that's about let's say five percent of the room and in my in my test I found out some obvious results for example that I probably have curly hair and the color of my eyes and also when I eat asparagus then when I go to the toilet I can smell it anyway all sorts of things for example I really try to be a men's health cover model lifting whites in the gym but based on my genetics are more of an endurance athlete and also there were some interesting things concerning my character at least that's what the DNA test said because based on my genetics I probably get angry very fast and I lack empathy and my girlfriend says that at least one of those two is correct and I still don't know which one well so I talk about biotech genetics and synthetic biology and as Monique also introduced me I'm a biohacker so I'm interested in what is the impact of biotechnology and synthetic biology on our lives and on our businesses and I also studied at the biohek Academy cohorts 2019 at vacanc where I learned the basic fundamentals of working in the lab and also doing some projects like teen extraction Gene analysis and also genetic modification and first off I want to talk about why is this relevant right now and I'll give you five examples and the first one is in healthcare this was a couple of months ago where they successfully performed the first big two human heart transplants that's also called Xeno transplantation but before they implanted the Pixar into the human body they genetically modified the pig's heart because otherwise the human body would reject that heart so that's the first example in healthcare another example one of the most enormous challenges we face as humans today is of course the climate crisis and plants are already magnificent of course in sucking CO2 out of the air but maybe we can help with that that at least what some scientists are researching can we also improve the capability of plants with this CO2 and thereby help us and also the planet and if we talk about the climate we also think about pollution so this also an interesting development where there's an enzyme that can devour plastic trash in hours and please take note of the first part of this article this AI decides enzyme I will get back to that later so here again you see the combination of Biotech and infotech and another example the third example is about infrastructure where they now also in scientists are working on living concrete so and that's also really cool because if the brick is not completely dehydrated it can also continue to multiply till eight eight times I think so instead of building in a linear way we can now also build in an exponential way so how awesome is that and another application is in fashion this is an example of the French Branch you're probably familiar with that and they can also cooperate with mycelium startup called microworks and maybe in future we have these kinds of application where you have self healing letter for example or maybe that also self recycling after a couple of years or months and the last example when we're concerning this age of Biotech that makes you think about food and this is com example of a combination with another technology called 3D printing where they also show that they can 3D print these kinds of beef also with the same kind of blood vessels and fat cells and all the The Little Fibers and they say that it will taste identical as regular meat or maybe in the future we'll say old-fashioned meat if we talk about cultured meat at least and in this domain of food I'm curious uh who here hates to have a hangover raise your hands yeah that's about 80 percent of you I I it's also it also get worse right when you age yeah that's correct yes at least my uh my uh what I feel concerning my head but there's also company in States called said biotics they're working on a probiotic to help you with your hangover so you can have the Boost but without the headaches so these are a couple of examples concerning synthetic biology I talked about Healthcare about the climate about infrastructure about fashion and about food and I'm curious uh just a short poll which one of these do you find is the most fascinating or interesting um ratio ahead if you think it's uh is Healthcare that's about 50 I would say who says well for me it's a climate that's a little bit more uh who says well uh for me the infrastructure that are that's less and who's very interested in the infection in this domain uh a couple of you and food with the hangover yeah The Hangover did the trick I think yeah so I'm curious uh just uh um a small type of interaction uh can I ask you what what did you answer sir uh climate climate yeah and and why what are the motivations of your climate is very uh now and and uh yeah it's important yeah yeah thank you very much can I also ask you what did you uh answer uh Healthcare Healthcare yeah and your motivation for that um because Healthcare is really Under Pressure there's not enough people to take care of the elderly of the sick people so if we can help them those professionals with additional technology that will be beneficial yeah yeah thank you very much and uh for you sir because you answered the uh the first question please visit me after oh please visit me after the talk then you'll get a free copy of my book Superman's yeah a round of applause for the first volunteer and also for the rest of you uh if you did not win the book uh you know Christmas is coming up so intense um all right so as a futurist I'm also interested in what are the second order effects of these kinds of developments for example are there certain regions or countries that have another culture or another way they look at these kinds of projects and experiments and I'd like to take of John L Oliver on the domain of Gene editing specifically related to the country of China all right I got back to the edit later so I talked about why why it's relevant right now for you and your businesses now you're probably thinking here why now why should I pay attention now well I give you three reasons the first one is as an I.T audience you're probably familiar with Marsh law and what's really fascinating is that the cost of genome sequencing first caught up with Marsh law and then boom went down like Way Beyond the cost of the marsh law was progressing that's also called the Carlson's curve so that's the first example and the second example is that also public organizations and governments are also paying attention this is a recent initiative by the US government where President Biden launched the national bio technology and bio manufacturing initiative and they're all aimed at the different kind of applications I mentioned before climate food Healthcare Etc and the third example why it's relevant right now is when you look at the funding of synthetic biology companies that's also growing expansionally in the last couple of years so these are all signs that you have to pay attention to this domain of synthetic biology but maybe you're still sitting in the audience and thinking why me why is relevant for me well that's because these two domains are merging together so when we look at synthetic biology this is a definition by the wageningen university then we see it has to do with all kinds of domains by the way the difference if you're curious what's the difference between biotech and synthetic biology biotechnology is more looking at how can we improve existing life forms and synthetic biology is can we create new life forms that can also perform new functions but when you look at this definition or this schematic by the Wagner University you of course see microbiology and Agriculture and chemistry but you also see like bioinformatics and also computer science and physics so this is an example where these two domains are coming together and I give you a couple of other examples for when I did the biohack academy at the Vach I ordered also synthetic DNA where I performed Some Cuts and edits but before I get I got the synthetic DNA to do the project in a lab I worked with this program called benchling to do simulations and Analysis of the certain cut points for the enzymes to work on so before I did my experiment in vitro I did it in silico this again you see the combination of both worlds and probably also heard the news about deepmind who uncovered the structure of 200 million proteins because proteins they are essential in our lives that's also based on the DNA you have a transcript to RNA it builds it to amino acids that are proteins but the way that they function is dependent not only on how they are structured but also how they are folded and until now it was a really mystery about how does these processes work and how do how do they fold and now deepmind also helped with that so again you see the combination of these two domains and I like to quote late Steve Jobs at a conference like this uh because he said he said I think that the biggest Innovations of the 21st century will be at the intersection of biology and Technology a new era is beginning so there we see the combination of Biotech and infotech so it will also probably impact your lives and also your businesses but maybe you are looking at this lecture and thinking maybe you got a hunch or gut feeling like hmm should we go ahead this fast and and there are some applications which does not really feel right for me and that's a valid point so for the last part of my presentation I want to talk about ethics because you are also familiar with cyber security and what's what will happen if you have a data leakage that's of course Troublesome but the problem could be even worse if we also have a data leakage of your DNA for example because you cannot change your own genetics well you can but that's not all another story so this is it highlights or magnifies the troubles we already see in it if we also apply it to biotech and also think of cyber security they do we can we see similarities between regular I.T hacking and biohacking for example now a really fascinating example is uh in a book uh by Ronald Kessler 2009 at the president's service and he was a naval Steward working for President Obama at that time and in the book in this book Ronald gesser states that when President Obama would visit a hotel just to stay there for the night the naval stewards would collect all the bed sheets all the Drinker glasses so that male effectors could not get a hold of one of the of the genetic material of the president think about that so maybe for they can analyze the genetics and explain or bring some of the the risk of the president into the open the genetic risk but there was also talk of personalized bio weapons based on the genetics of the president so that's a second type of ethical question or challenge we face when we talk about synthetic biology and the third one is a technology called Gene Drive and this is Kevin Ashfield at MIT and he's working at Gene Drive technology and what you do is instead of making genetic changes in an animal or in a human that's called somatic Gene genetic modification so it stays within the body but with Gene knife technology you can also change it in the sex cells that's why there's a change in in a human or in an animal in the case of Gene dive you will also continue that that character will also continue to evolve in your in your Offspring so in the Next Generation so in that way they are looking at this technology for example to eradicate malaria so that's The Offspring will only be males and males cannot spread the malaria disease to humans but again that makes me think well is it really a good idea for us as humans to Tinker with evolution well the comedy Family Guy also made a prediction about that so to close off a recap of what I told you today I first started my story with the applications about climate Healthcare fashion food infrastructure then I talk why it's relevant right now for you to pay attention to synthetic biology and also why it's relevant for you because we see the merger of synthetic biology also with information technology and last part we also see the same kind of moral and ethical questions we can see some similarities with it but also come up with new ethical and moral dilemmas if you talk about changing Evolution for the better maybe also as a way to help us with the climate crisis but I started my story if you remember about my father and my father luckily is doing well he's in the middle and that may really make me think about the similarities between what happened to my father and also to me and also the story about synthetic biology because my father is now aware of the risks and predispositions he has that are probably in his genes and I think the same applies to synthetic biology and your interest so think about yourself this afternoon or tonight of what I just heard what are the benefits of synthetic biology to my life and my business but also what are the challenges and with that I'd like to thank you for your attention 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