"China is speed, Japan is precision, and Korea achieves both at the same time. The force created together by these three countries will drive innovation in synthetic biology."
Mark Dupal, Asia-Pacific regional general manager and vice president of U.S. Twist Bioscience, said this about the three Asian countries at a joint academic conference of the Korean Society for Biotechnology and Bioengineering and the Asian Federation of Biotechnology held in Incheon on the 25th.
Twist Bioscience is a DNA synthesis specialist based in Silicon Valley, providing gene synthesis and related services around the world, including Korea. Gene synthesis is a core tool of synthetic biology that designs and reconfigures the genes of living organisms to produce useful substances.
Vice President Dupal said, "If the 20th century was the age of oil, the 21st century is the age of synthetic biology," adding, "There are few areas it doesn't reach, from diagnosing and treating intractable diseases such as dementia and cancer, to solving environmental problems, to innovating the food industry. Our lives are meeting that change."
In this respect, the Asia-Pacific region, where more than half of the world's population is concentrated, can be seen as even more important for synthetic biology. Vice President Dupal said, "Technology developed in the Asia-Pacific can create a virtuous cycle that feeds the Asia-Pacific, where solving food, environmental and resource issues is urgent," and assessed, "In particular, Korea, China and Japan have the potential to the extent that they can support the West." The combination of "speed, precision and convergence" mentioned earlier is the very foundation for realizing this potential.
Twist Bioscience said it is focused on accelerating research and development (R&D) by providing researchers and corporations with the DNA they need faster, cheaper, and at higher quality. Vice President Dupal noted, "What researchers who want to build AI (artificial intelligence) models for synthetic biology lack the most is data," and explained, "Based on DNA synthesis, we will supply vast amounts of data to speed up AI innovation."
He cited antibody proteins and the production of ribonucleic acid (RNA) for gene regulation or vaccines as next-generation key investment areas. Vice President Dupal said, "DNA synthesis must become cheaper to quickly make desired proteins and RNA," and predicted, "Within 10 years, DNA will no longer be a special product handled only by researchers but a consumer good anyone can use."
However, safety and ethics are issues as important to corporations as the speed of growth. Vice President Dupal said, "Biosecurity issues such as the commercialization and weaponization of genetic information are extremely important," adding, "When customers request gene synthesis, we continuously test and update our system so it can automatically detect pathogenic risks in the submitted DNA sequence information and even catch variant sequences."