Which industry barely exists now, helped tame COVID, will allow planes to fly on sugar cane fuel, could solve 45% of all medical problems and will be worth $40 trillion globally, $27 billion in Australia alone, by 2040 meet Synbio.

Synbio, or Synthetic biology, uses engineering principles to design and modify living things.

It’s a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature.

Synthetic biology is the convergence of advances in chemistry, biology, computer science, and engineering that enables us to go from idea to product faster, cheaper, and with greater precision than ever before.

It can be thought of as a biology-based “toolkit” that uses abstraction, standardisation, and automated construction to change how we build biological systems and expand the range of possible products.

The term was first coined in 1910, but had limited applications or possibilities. It was again picked up in the 1960’s, but in the last decade has come into its own and is set for the brightest of futures.

In this week’s segment Hong Kong Radio 3’s Phil Whelan and I chat about the possibilities of Synbio, what it is, why it is, and what possibilities it may bring.

Listen now (16 minutes 31 seconds)