Real-World Synthetic Biology: Is It Founded on an Engineering Approach, and Should It Be?

Authors often assert that a key feature of 21st-century synthetic biology is its use of an ‘engineering approach’; design using predictive models, modular architecture, construction using well-characterized standard parts, and rigorous testing using standard metrics. This article examines whether this is, or even should be, the case. A brief survey of synthetic biology projects that have reached, or are near to, commercial application outside laboratories shows that they showed very few of these attributes. Instead, they featured much trial and error, and the use of specialized, custom components and assays. What is more, consideration of the special features of living systems suggest that a conventional engineering approach will often not be helpful. The article concludes that the engineering approach may be useful in some projects, but it should not be used to define or constrain synthetic biological endeavour, and that in fact the conventional engineering has more to gain by expanding and embracing more biological ways of working.

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Mid-level generalizations of generative linguistics: Experimental robustness, cognitive underpinnings and the interdisciplinarity paradox

Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft ◽

10.1515/zfs-2020-2021 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 39 (3) ◽

pp. 357-374

Author(s):

Evelina Leivada

Keyword(s):

Case Studies ◽

21St Century ◽

Universal Grammar ◽

Generative Syntax ◽

Generative Linguistics ◽

The Road ◽

Rigorous Testing ◽

Rule Out

Abstract This work examines the nature of the so-called “mid-level generalizations of generative linguistics” (MLGs). In 2015, Generative Syntax in the 21st Century: The Road Ahead was organized. One of the consensus points that emerged related to the need for establishing a canon, the absence of which was argued to be a major challenge for the field, raising issues of interdisciplinarity and interaction. Addressing this challenge, one of the outcomes of this conference was a list of MLGs. These refer to results that are well established and uncontroversially accepted. The aim of the present work is to embed some MLGs into a broader perspective. I take the Cinque hierarchies for adverbs and adjectives and the Final-over-Final Constraint as case studies in order to determine their experimental robustness. It is showed that at least some MLGs face problems of inadequacy when tapped into through rigorous testing, because they rule out data that are actually attested. I then discuss the nature of some MLGs and show that in their watered-down versions, they do hold and can be derived from general cognitive/computational biases. This voids the need to cast them as language-specific principles, in line with the Chomskyan urge to approach Universal Grammar from below.

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Inquiry through Industrial Chemistry in Compulsory Secondary Education for the Achievement of the Development of the 21st Century Skills

Education Sciences ◽

10.3390/educsci11090475 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (9) ◽

pp. 475

Author(s):

María Diez Ojeda ◽

Miguel Ángel Queiruga-Dios ◽

Noelia Velasco-Pérez ◽

Emilia López-Iñesta ◽

José Benito Vázquez-Dorrío

Keyword(s):

Secondary Education ◽

21St Century ◽

Real World ◽

21St Century Skills ◽

Educational Practice ◽

Pilot Test ◽

Industrial Chemistry ◽

Education Systems ◽

The Real ◽

The Subject

At a key moment when education systems are moving towards the development of 21st-century skills at school, we propose to develop them with a series of enquiry activities connected to the real world on the subject of Chemistry in Compulsory Secondary Education. The four selected topics have practical aspects, as they are related to industrial chemistry, and are proposed in educational practice using the 5E model. The results obtained in a pilot test with 22 students show that the context created facilitates the development of 21st century competences. It is understood that this novel proposal can be successfully employed in other contexts.

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A set of experimentally validated, mutually orthogonal primers for combinatorially specifying genetic components

Synthetic Biology ◽

10.1093/synbio/ysx008 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Subu K Subramanian ◽

William P Russ ◽

Rama Ranganathan

Keyword(s):

Synthetic Biology ◽

High Throughput ◽

Dna Sequences ◽

Gene Synthesis ◽

Modular Architecture ◽

Design And Synthesis ◽

Genetic Components ◽

Polymerase Chain ◽

Polymerase Chain Reaction Primers ◽

Microarray Chips

Abstract The design and synthesis of novel genes and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequences is a central technique in synthetic biology. Current methods of high throughput gene synthesis use pooled oligonucleotides obtained from custom-designed DNA microarray chips, and rely on orthogonal (non-interacting) polymerase chain reaction primers to specifically de-multiplex, by amplification, the precise subset of oligonucleotides necessary to assemble a full length gene. The availability of a large validated set of mutually orthogonal primers is therefore a crucial reagent for high-throughput gene synthesis. Here, we present a set of 166 20-nucleotide primers that are experimentally verified to be non-interacting, capable of specifying 13 695 unique genes. These primers represent a valuable resource to the synthetic biology community for specifying genetic components that can be assembled through a scalable and modular architecture.

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4. Synthetic biology and healthcare

Synthetic Biology: A Very Short Introduction ◽

10.1093/actrade/9780198803492.003.0004 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 58-72

Author(s):

Jamie A. Davies

Keyword(s):

Synthetic Biology ◽

Real World ◽

Human Cells ◽

Medical Applications ◽

Monitoring And Diagnosis ◽

Research Context ◽

New Vaccines

‘Synthetic biology and healthcare’ explains how synthetic biology can be applied to medicine: it can be used to produce drugs and new vaccines; improve monitoring and diagnosis; and it is just starting to be used to modify human cells with properties designed to help patients. In a research context, it is being applied to building new tissues. For most medical applications, there is no risk of the engineered organisms ‘running wild’ in the general environment; risk is restricted to specific patients who already have a problem that needs to be solved. In general, therefore, medicine is a field in which synthetic biology may make its earliest significant real-world contributions.

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Trans-Sectoral Neuroscience Innovation for the 21st Century

Convergence Mental Health ◽

10.1093/med/9780197506271.003.0036 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 545-558

Author(s):

Michael McCullough ◽

Laura Roberts ◽

Diana Saville ◽

Calvin Nguyen ◽

Bo Shao ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Computer Science ◽

Clinical Psychiatry ◽

21St Century ◽

Real World ◽

Philosophy Of Mind ◽

High Impact ◽

Brain Science ◽

Commercial Use ◽

Life Saving ◽

Science Philosophy

Humanity is on the verge of a radically productive era in brain science, yet far too many important and impactful ideas will never leave the lab due to the profit-driven infrastructure supporting translation. BrainMind is a platform and private community connecting people developing high-impact innovations in brain science with capital and entrepreneurial resources at scale. The BrainMind ecosystem is driving the coordination of expertise, capital, and infrastructure to bring critical life-saving ideas out of the lab and into real-world. clinical and commercial use. The BrainMind community includes members from research, medicine, entrepreneurship, investing, philanthropy, and policy, with the community growing to include more interdisciplinary voices including experts in statistics, clinical psychiatry, ethics, computer science, philosophy of mind, and economics, to name a few.

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Monofunctional and polyfunctional information tools with an operative function

Lexicographica - International Annual for Lexicography / Internationales Jahrbuch für Lexikographie ◽

10.1515/lexi-2017-0017 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 33 (1) ◽

pp. 361-390 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Heidi Agerbo

Keyword(s):

21St Century ◽

Real World ◽

Information Needs ◽

Future Research ◽

Linguistic Information ◽

The Real ◽

Vast Amount ◽

Information Tools ◽

Types Of Information

AbstractThough a vast amount of dictionary analyses have been produced over the years, hardly any of these have mentioned the operative function, which has been overlooked in most lexicographical literature. With short analyses of 12 existing dictionaries ranging from the 18th century to the 21st century, this article shows that many dictionaries have indeed been produced to satisfy operative needs. Based on this result, it is clear that the operative function deserves a place in lexicographical theory. An interesting finding that came out of these analyses was that especially dictionaries from the 18th to the early 20th centuries (the old dictionaries) were written to accommodate several types of information needs that their users would come across in the real world, including operative needs, whereas the focus of most contemporary dictionaries is to satisfy linguistic information needs. This is an interesting change in focus, which this article criticises. Based on the above mentioned analyses, a number of questions are raised to guide future research into the operative function.

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Bottom-Up Synthetic Biology: Engineering in a Tinkerer’s World

Science ◽

10.1126/science.1211701 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 333 (6047) ◽

pp. 1252-1254 ◽

Cited By ~ 137

Author(s):

Petra Schwille

Keyword(s):

Synthetic Biology ◽

Life Science ◽

Biological Systems ◽

Living Systems ◽

Design Features ◽

Literal Interpretation ◽

Bottom Up ◽

Systematic Construction ◽

Science Discipline ◽

Recent Developments

How synthetic can “synthetic biology” be? A literal interpretation of the name of this new life science discipline invokes expectations of the systematic construction of biological systems with cells being built module by module—from the bottom up. But can this possibly be achieved, taking into account the enormous complexity and redundancy of living systems, which distinguish them quite remarkably from design features that characterize human inventions? There are several recent developments in biology, in tight conjunction with quantitative disciplines, that may bring this literal perspective into the realm of the possible. However, such bottom-up engineering requires tools that were originally designed by nature’s greatest tinkerer: evolution.

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Digital Literacy Skills Among Librarians in University Libraries In the 21st Century in Edo And Delta States, Nigeria

International Journal of Library and Information Services ◽

10.4018/ijlis.2017010103 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 37-52 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Ogochukwu Thaddaeus Emiri

Keyword(s):

Mobile Phones ◽

21St Century ◽

Digital Literacy ◽

Formal Education ◽

Literacy Skills ◽

Trial And Error ◽

University Libraries ◽

Level Of Use ◽

Research Questions ◽

Descriptive Survey

This paper discussed the contemporary digital literacy skills (DLS) among librarians in university libraries the 21st century in Edo and Delta States of Southern Nigeria. The study was guided by six objectives and research questions and one hypothesis. The design of the study is descriptive survey and the population consist of all librarians from university libraries in the aforementioned states in Nigeria. The instrument used to generate data is the questionnaire and the date generated was analysed using simple percentages and frequency count for research questions and SPSS version 14.0. The findings show that electronic mailing, social networking, use of PDAs, mobile phones and internet surfing are the major DLS amongst librarians. It was also discovered that librarians acquired DLS through colleague's assistance, trial and error, IT programmes and formal education while librarian's level of use of DLS is low amongst other findings. Researcher made useful recommendations.

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Downward causation by information control in micro-organisms

Interface Focus ◽

10.1098/rsfs.2011.0045 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 26-41 ◽

Cited By ~ 20

Author(s):

Luc Jaeger ◽

Erin R. Calkins

Keyword(s):

Operating System ◽

Synthetic Biology ◽

Living Systems ◽

Functional Equivalence ◽

Information Control ◽

Top Down ◽

Adaptive Selection ◽

Feedback Information ◽

Protein World ◽

Micro Organisms

The concepts of functional equivalence classes and information control in living systems are useful to characterize downward (or top-down) causation by feedback information control in synthetic biology. Herein, we re-analyse published experiments of microbiology and synthetic biology that demonstrate the existence of several classes of functional equivalence in microbial organisms. Classes of functional equivalence from the bacterial operating system, which processes and controls the information encoded in the genome, can readily be interpreted as strong evidence, if not demonstration, of top-down causation (TDC) by information control. The proposed biological framework reveals how this type of causality is put in action in the cellular operating system. Considerations on TDC by information control and adaptive selection can be useful for synthetic biology by delineating the irreducible set of properties that characterizes living systems. Through a ‘retro-synthetic’ biology approach, these considerations could contribute to identifying the constraints behind the emergence of molecular complexity during the evolution of an ancient RNA/peptide world into a modern DNA/RNA/protein world. In conclusion, we propose TDCs by information control and adaptive selection as the two types of downward causality absolutely necessary for life.

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