合成生物学时代:生物安全、生物安保与治理

The Era of Synthetic Biology:Biosafety,Biosecurity and Governance

合成生物学是现代生物学最具发展潜力的领域之一,它将工程学的理念引入生物学研发中,汇聚性地融合多学科概念、方法和工具,从而能够设计、改造或创造新颖的或具有专门功能的生物系统或生物体。合成生物学具有广阔的应用前景,其革命性的进展有望改善人类生活的诸多方面。然而,作为典型的两用性研究领域,合成生物学的发展伴随一系列潜在的生物安全和生物安保的双重风险,将给人类、动植物和生态环境带来重大危害,给国家安全造成威胁。现有治理模式已不再适应合成生物学的高速发展和颠覆性变革。为探寻合成生物学领域风险治理的适当模式,需要根据合成生物学发展现状和趋势,客观、有效地分析合成生物学发展所附带的安全和安保问题及演变趋势,进而从国家法律规制、政府监管、科学共同体的自治以及政府、共同体的国际合作与对话等方面,探讨动态调整的综合性合成生物学生物安全和生物安保风险的治理模式。

Synthetic biology,one of the most promising fields of frontier biology,has not only introduced the concept of engineering into biological research and development but also incorporated multidisciplinary concepts,methods and tools from other fields.Therefore,synthetic biology is able to design,modify or create novel or specialized biological systems or organisms,which holds untold promise for applications with the great possibility of improving many aspects of human life.However,as a typical dual-use research field,the development of synthetic biology has been accompanied by a series of the potential biosafety and biosecurity risks,which may not only wreak havoc on humans,animals,plants and the ecological environment but also pose severe threats to national security.The existing governance models are no longer appropriate for the rapid development of synthetic biology that has brought disruptive changes to science and technology.In order to explore a proper model of risk management in the field of synthetic biology,it is necessary to take into consideration the status quo and trends of synthetic biology development,objectively and effectively analyse the ensuing safety and security issues as well as their evolutionary trends.Further efforts can be made to explore a comprehensive and dynamically adjusted risk governance model of biosafety and biosecurity issues in the field of synthetic biology,taking into consideration of state laws and regulations,government supervision,self-regulation of the scientific community,and international cooperation and dialogue among governments and communities.