How a groundbreaking genetics conference 50 years ago informs Minnesota research today

NINA MOINI: It was 50 years ago this month that science research in the US took a landmark turn. It may not be common knowledge amongst everyone, but biologists know the significance of the historic Asilomar Conference that took place in California amongst about 150 scientists. They had reached a turning point in research on DNA that would change the science world forever.

Kate Adamala researches genetics and cell biology at the University of Minnesota. Her work to create artificial cells is a direct result of what scientists talked about at their conference 50 years ago. And she was lucky enough to be at the anniversary conference to talk about the state of biotechnology in California last week.

She's back in Minnesota now and on the line to reflect on that experience. Kate, thanks again so much for joining me.

KATE ADAMALA: Hi, and thanks for having me.

NINA MOINI: So 50 years ago, obviously long before you began your career, but the Asilomar Summit was taking place in California, of course. And scientists were really excited about breakthroughs in genetic engineering. So for people without a science background, can you explain briefly what the scientific advances around that time were, why they were so significant?

KATE ADAMALA: Around that time, people just learned how to modify the genomes of organisms. So we've been sort of modifying genomes of organisms for thousands of years, because that's what selective breeding is. Anytime you do agriculture, anytime you make a new breed of a farm animal or a new breed of crops, you are doing genetic engineering. You just don't do it consciously. You pick the best offspring.

And about 50 years ago, we first learned how to do that in a very intentional way. So instead of just crossbreeding organisms and looking at which of the children has the traits that we're looking for, we figured out what controls those traits, so the genome of the organism, and how to directly manipulate that. So instead of waiting for generations of breeding, we can make the change in the genome, and the first generation born should already have the exact traits that we want. And that was a huge breakthrough that changes the way we think about biology, we think about modifying biology. And that was the turning point in the history of science that precipitated the original Asilomar meeting.

NINA MOINI: That's fascinating. And you sort of alluded to that this is something that can touch many areas of life. And I wonder if scientists back then were wanting to be intentional about how to move forward, and if they were worried about anything in terms of ethics. What do you think about that?

KATE ADAMALA: Yes, that was the whole point of the original Asilomar meeting was to talk about not the technology underlying the research, but the intent, not how should we do it, but should we do it at all, what are the ethics, what are the safety considerations, what are the security considerations around manipulating genomes on this very fundamental level. And that was really the origin of the intentional biosafety-biosecurity conversations that we're having around biotechnology ever since.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, and so last week, you attended again the 50 year anniversary summit. What were your takeaways? Do you think the people that were there 50 years ago would be pleased with where the science world is at now?

KATE ADAMALA: I would hope they would be pleased. I also hope they would be amazed of how far we went. The field really developed really fast. The capabilities that we have right now would probably seem like magic to people 50 years ago. And that precipitated the need to have this discussion again, to have the second Asilomar, because the landscape changed so much that we need to take a step back and think about what we're doing, how we're doing it, and how to do it safely.

NINA MOINI: Sure, would you talk a little bit about what some of the scientific advances that have been made in the past 50 years are, how they relate to that original summit?

KATE ADAMALA: Yes, the advancements in the field have been both on the technical level. So we can manipulate genes with the precision that never existed before. We can manipulate every single gene down to every single letter in that gene.

We also understand so much more about what we're doing. That's the major thing that was missing 50 years ago is people knew they can manipulate genes, but they weren't sure what most of the genes are doing. It's still not a solved problem, but we know so much more about what particular pieces of DNA do. And we can combine them in ways that create new functionalities in organisms. We can basically design a trait and make an organism with that trait. And that's the huge, new advancement.

NINA MOINI: It's so powerful even just to hear you say it. And I'm curious, what were some of the particular ethics concerns around biotechnology that were being discussed this time at the summit?

KATE ADAMALA: The biggest area of concern that we have right now is how to safeguard those technologies. So a lot of the research can be applied for good or for bad. So for example, I can modify a bacteria so it produces a pharmaceutical, a drug that goes and cures people. But with the same technology, someone else can modify a bacteria and create a drug that can harm people.

And as the technologies are growing, there is more and more capabilities that could be misused. And that's what we were talking about, is how to make sure that all of this progress in synthetic biology is used for treating diseases, solving climate change problems, not for creating potentially hazardous applications, like drugs or pathogenic bacteria.

NINA MOINI: Sure, and Professor, do you want to talk a little bit about some of the research that you're doing in your lab right now, and how you apply some of these principles?

KATE ADAMALA: We're making cells that never existed in nature. We call them synthetic cells. And we're making them because nature cannot do a lot of things. We think that nature has this great variety of form and function, but it really, on the chemical level, nature is quite boring. There is a relatively limited set of chemicals that natural organisms use. And so if we want to make better drugs or if we want to move away from petrochemicals in industry, we have to have biological systems that move beyond this natural chemistry, the chemistry that's baked into evolution.

And that's what my lab is doing, is we're building cells that behave like normal cells but have greater capacity. They can do more than natural organisms. And that obviously creates potential concerns, because everything we're doing is to build better tools for human health, for agriculture, for industry.

But every time you modify an organism on such a fundamental level, it's possible to also misuse it. And that's why I was there at Asilomar. That's why our work needs to be regulated by conversations like the Asilomar, because we want to make sure that the uses that we're developing are only on the good side, no one comes in and takes my research and builds a harmful drag out of it, for example.

NINA MOINI: And how would that happen, Professor? Does that come from a legal standpoint or just people within the science world setting up best practices within the community? How is all of this regulated?

KATE ADAMALA: Both legal and community regulation. So there is a lot of both US federal and international law that regulate our work already. There are safeguards in place against accidental or intentional release into the environment, against designing organisms with certain pathogenic threats. So we're not allowed to do this. And that's good that we're not.

And there's also this community pressure, peer pressure, you might say, is we, as scientists, we talk to colleagues, we publish our work, and if someone was bringing their research program in a direction that most of the community would agree is harmful, we would speak up against that. And actually, there is an example of us doing just that a couple of months ago. In December, we had a paper in Science, where we discussed as a community, we spoke up against doing one particular type of research that my lab and other labs were previously involved in. And we did a safety-security analysis of that and decided we should not be doing that. And so that's an example of not legally binding, but a very strong peer pressure that we enact on ourselves against doing certain kinds of research.

NINA MOINI: OK, so you were at this second Asilomar Conference. There was the conference 50 years ago, the one current day that you were at. If you could imagine 50 years from now where the field is at, if people decided to do things in an ethical way. You talked about it was magic, now would be magic to people 50 years ago, what do you think it could even look like in 50 years from now?

KATE ADAMALA: It's really difficult to make predictions like that because new technological advancements change the way we even think about what's possible. I'm hoping that in 50 years I would be surprised. That's the best outcome for me is if I was magically transported 50 years forward in time, I would love to see science that I cannot even imagine right now.

And on the practical level, I'm hoping what that means is that a lot of diseases that we have right now that are untreatable will become treatable with advancements of synthetic biology. And I'm hoping that we'll see a reverse of the climate change, so we'll see a carbon neutral economy that's made possible by biology, by the technologies we're already developing, but also by technologies that we can't even imagine at this point.

NINA MOINI: Fascinating. Thank you so much for coming on with us, Professor, and sharing about your work and about the summit.

KATE ADAMALA: Thank you so much for having me.

NINA MOINI: That was University of Minnesota Biology Professor Kate Adamala.