Synthetic Biology and the 2024 Nobel Prizes: Reflecting on Canada SynBio 2024

Last week was an incredibly exciting week for Ontario Genomics, as we hosted nearly 300 people at the MaRS Discovery District for the 6th edition of Canada SynBio, the country’s premier engineering biology conference. Not only that, but it was also Nobel Week, and all three scientific prizes were presented to scientists with deep contributions to the fields of genomics and engineering biology.?

On Monday, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun, “for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.” MicroRNAs are very short ‘snippets’ of ribonucleic acid (RNA) that have enormous implications for how our genomes function. Our genes encode proteins that then go on to perform specific functions. MicroRNAs can prevent the assembly of those proteins, which is referred to as down-regulation.?

Why is this important? MicroRNAs are critical for a variety of reasons, such as maintaining the appropriate levels of proteins in our cells. More so, this is one of the features that allows our cells to have specific functions. For example, a skin cell doesn't need to make proteins that are relevant to muscle or fat cells, so microRNAs will help down-regulate those irrelevant proteins. This helps our bodies stay efficient by using resources like energy where they are needed! We can also use this knowledge to make new microRNA-based medicines, control certain genes in engineered microbes, and so much more! At Canada SynBio 2024, we talked a lot about up-and-coming technologies which relied on the development of microRNAs.??

The Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics both revolve around how artificial intelligence is helping scientists discover and create new biological systems – just like we’ve been talking about all week at Canada SynBio 2024. First, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton (go University of Toronto!), “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.” You’ve probably used one of the results of this research (think AI chat bots like ChatGPT), but what you might not know is that scientists build and use similar large language models to help in drug discovery, to map out genetic interactions across genomes, and even anticipate cancers before they grow. AI is revolutionizing how we understand the genomes of all living organisms, giving biological engineers even more tools to help the world. Some of our BioCreate startups that presented at Canada SynBio 2024 have developed technologies that use AI, from automating lab workflows to accelerating scientific data analysis.

Finally, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to David Baker, “for computational protein design” and to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper, “for protein structure prediction.” The main role of our genomes is to store and copy information about how and when certain proteins should be created by our cells. An individual gene can carry the code for multiple proteins, so there are even more proteins in nature than there are genes. In humans alone, it’s estimated that there are more than 500,000 different proteins, all coming from 20,000 protein-coding genes. It would be very difficult to characterize all of these proteins one-by-one, so scientists have created AI-based tools to help us out. Not only that, but these tools can also help us design even more protein structures that could be used for new medicines, diagnostics, agricultural inputs, food ingredients, and more. At Canada SynBio 2024, we talked about how biological systems are central to the future of agriculture and food, and this discovery is key in realizing that future.?

All three of these fundamental discoveries are vital to the growth of engineering biology. We can’t build new organisms to help us improve health, fight the climate crisis, and create a better world for future generations unless we have a true understanding of how natural biological systems work. It was so exciting to see how the Canadian engineering biology community continues to grow and innovate, incorporating these Nobel-winning discoveries into their day-to-day work. Ontario Genomics is committed to continuing to support this growth and ensuring that biology is at the center of our economy, our communities, and our interactions with the environment.?