Photo via openwetzare.org
Scientists from MIT, Harvard and UCSF have applied the principles of manufacturing to the living cell. Stand-alone, viable DNA fragment sequences are registered in MIT’s Registry of Standard Biological Parts, and anyone can have access to this information, free-of-charge. Each defined DNA sequence is trademarked as a BioBrick(TM). There are two parallels that I see between BioBricks and the non-BioBricks world.
First, the philosophy behind the open publication of BioBrick DNA sequences is similar to that of open source coding libraries, such as VTK and ITK. BioBrick(TM) information is completely free and can be used by anyone for any commercial end. For example, an entrepreneur can set up a company to market and distribute BioBrick standard parts just as he or she could create a software for purchase using code from VTK and ITK libraries. The information, and the research behind compiling such information, is free for use and holds value for any commercial opportunity in the general marketplace. Similar to open source code, BioBrick parts are available to the general public as fodder for business opportunties.
In addition, the BioBrick philosophy encourages a wide participation in the development of its uses and limitations, which other collaborative media, such as Wiki and Linux platforms, reverberate. The BioBricks community is as large as the medium can reach, and in the case of the Internet, the reach is virtually limitless when it comes to computer-literate minds. The Internet enables free participation from any interested person and is a common trait among the previously-cited outlets of information dissemination.
Coming from a manufacturing enterprise, where bringing down costs and maximizing production were two main organizational priorties, I understand the concept of using existing parts and putting them together in different combinations until a sellable, new product has been created. In the manufacturing world of industrial products, the creation of new products from parts of existing ones defines the modular philosophy of manufacturing: put already-invented items together to form a completely new, marketable product. Case-in-point: the heat and cooling systems components manufacturer, Danfoss, markets a product for every system requirement by simply varying a core product with different combinations of two to six sub-components. Danfoss, in turn, keeps capital costs down because they do not need to invest in X different types of machinery systems in order to manufacture X products for X system requirements. At the very basic level, only six machining systems would suffice to meet all of Danfoss’s customer base’s system requirements, when X products would be created in the end.
In the biotechnology realm, creating a new organism does not have to result from a long process of testing different nucleic acids together until a functional DNA sequence is formed. The work is already done. The engineering part comes in to play in trying to figure out how one part works with another and if it is a valuable combination.
I’ve never really looked into this kind of business model before. This is going onto my to-do list.
Leave a Comment