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Innocence and SynAt this science fair, students are creating new forms of life.

By Jesse LichtensteinPosted Friday, Nov. 30, 2007, at 6:43 PM ET

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Not that homemade bacteria and viruses aren't sufficiently alarming. One iGEM participant I spoke to—an undergraduate mathematician from Mexico City—had taught himself enough biology in a few months to start inventing brand-new organisms. What if a self-taught terrorist managed to create build-it-yourself smallpox kits, or made a supervirus combining the worst of whatever he could find? The synthetic biologists that I spoke with at iGEM, and later at an open meeting called by the BioBricks Foundation, believe that threats of bioterror are overblown. At the same time, synthetic biologists can seem resigned to the potential risks of what's to come. Drew Endy, presiding over the two-day discussion of fieldwide technical and legal standards, spoke several times of the "garagistas" of the near future who will be tinkering with new life forms the way PC enthusiasts tinkered with motherboards and software in the 1970s. Standards and protocols imply civil agreement, basic collective goals, and accountability. But synbio hacks life, and there seems little question that it will attract some classic, lone-wolf hackers, as well as groups or individuals with malign intentions.

What can be done about that? Endy doesn't evince much faith in legislative oversight. "There is no country in the world that has a biosecurity plan that makes any sense," he told the BioBricks convention. More engineers than biologists, the synthetic biologists hope to outengineer the problem—and create organisms that can't survive in the wild, can't reproduce, can't easily mutate.

But the kids at iGEM, flushed with camaraderie and the fruition of months of hard work, seem unimpressed by any specters lurking in the shadows. As the last day of the iGEM jamboree drew to a close, the team finalists presented their work to the assembled group in a large auditorium at the Kresge Center. While everyone waited for the judges to determine the winner, MIT professor Randy Rettberg stepped to the mic. "You are the world leaders in synthetic biology," he told the youth. "This is the beginning of a new industry, and people at iGEM will start that industry. I expect you to have the startups, I expect you to have the private jets, and I expect you to call me up and offer me a ride." Backpacks stowed beneath their seats, his audience fiddled with their laptops and cheered when Rettberg began a slide show of snapshots from the weekend.

After what seemed like hours of deliberation, the team from Beijing won the grand prize. They'd made a DNA "switch" that launched a division of labor among bacteria, allowing a single population to differentiate and take on more than one job at once in response to the same stimulus. Onstage, the smiling Peking University students hoisted their trophy high. A little while later, the world's biggest collection of synthetic biologists gathered for a bird's-eye photograph. They mustered in clumps of T-shirt-color-coordinated teammates and gazed upwards at the lens, like colonies of bacteria crowding on a giant petri dish.