Lessons on Synthetic Bioarchitectures

Abstract

The objective of synthetic bioarchitectures as a field of research cannot be confined yet as it belongs to the converging sciences, still emerging; however, let us foresee one of the most relevant objectives of this field: the communication of life with synthetic matter. What can we learn by talking to nature in the language of molecules? We can interfere with biological pathways in a much more “compatible” format than has ever been possible before. For example, thinking about chemotherapy we might apply the German saying: “den Teufel mit dem Beelzebub austreiben”—which means that chemotherapy is about trading off: lacking specific tumor markers results in the attempt to stop proliferation in general and the result appears as treating “bad with similar bad”: we kill various cells in the course of chemotherapy and eventually we succeed by hitting cancerous cells harder than benign tissue. The side effects are of course enormous and undesired.