Perry, E., Weber, J., Pataranutaporn, P. et al. How to grow (almost) anything: a hybrid distance learning model for global laboratory-based synthetic biology education. Nat Biotechnol 40, 1874–1879 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-022-01601-x
A pilot program for synthetic biology education via a scalable distributed network model of distance-based laboratory learning can be accessible globally across disciplines and backgrounds.
The advent of synthetic biology (synbio) in the 2000s marked a new era for human innovation12. Dramatic technological advancements have revolutionized our ability to manipulate DNA, allowing us to inexpensively and accurately rewrite the blueprint of life on this planet. These tools will be instrumental in tackling urgent global challenges, from sustainable agriculture to pandemic response. Yet the self-replicating nature of biology could result in devastating consequences for entire ecosystems if synbio tools are used unethically, maliciously or without the critical awareness of unintended outcomes.
Consequently, synbio education has been recognized as a critical step to public acceptance and ethical development in the field3. While the tools and techniques of synbio have been widely adopted across the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, synbio education has lagged and is still largely viewed as too complex and prohibitively expensive for most students, making these technologies inaccessible to most of the world’s population. A 2017 examination of the US public’s attitudes on synbio revealed that the majority of the public does not feel sufficiently informed about the field and tends to oppose the use of or federal funding of synbio technology4.
