Making Security Viral: Shifting Engineering Biology Culture and Publishing

Earth: Extinguishing anthropogenic risks through harmonization

Human diseases can kill one person at a time, but the COVID-19 pandemic showed massacres could be possible. The climate crisis could be even worse, potentially leading to a bigger number of deaths of the human species and all living systems on Earth. I urge us to change our human-focused mindset to solve many problems, including the climate crisis, which humans caused to the entire ecosystems due to our arrogance: humans own this world. In this perspective article, I propose four recommendations to address climate issues through paradigm change and safe and sustainable technologies.

EBRC: Enhancing bioeconomy through research and communication

On September 12, 2022, President Biden issued Executive Order 14081 to enable the progress of biomanufacturing and biotechnology. This timely initiative will help overcome many challenging issues, and its potential impacts will be huge. This article discusses eight recommendations to make this US national initiative successful, encourage other nations to consider similar initiatives, and create a better world for the next generations.

SynHEAL: Synthesis of Health Equity, Advancement, and Leadership

ARPA-H recently started its operation with a great vision and potential to revolutionize the biomedical field and research. To help them shape the future biomedical field and community and to make the biotechnology community aware of this new, exciting funding agency, I share my vision after collecting many comments and opinions from researchers, policymakers, journal editors, and funding agency directors. As DARPA has made huge impacts on science, engineering, and society, ARPA-H will do so by paying attention to and implementing stakeholders' suggestions. I also suggest that the biotechnology community members, including academic researchers, people in the biotechnology industry, and policymakers, should nurture innovation and diversity.

Bottom-up assembly of viral replication cycles

Bottom-up synthetic biology provides new means to understand living matter by constructing minimal life-like systems. This principle can also be applied to study infectious diseases. Here we summarize approaches and ethical considerations for the bottom-up assembly of viral replication cycles.

Reinventing positive-strand RNA virus reverse genetics

Reverse genetics is the prospective analysis of how genotype determines phenotype. In a typical experiment, a researcher alters a viral genome, then observes the phenotypic outcome. Among RNA viruses, this approach was first applied to positive-strand RNA viruses in the mid-1970s and over nearly 50 years has become a powerful and widely used approach for dissecting the mechanisms of viral replication and pathogenesis. During this time the global health importance of two virus groups, flaviviruses (genus Flavivirus, family Flaviviridae) and betacoronaviruses (genus Betacoronavirus, subfamily Orthocoronavirinae, family Coronaviridae), have dramatically increased, yet these viruses have genomes that are technically challenging to manipulate. As a result, several new techniques have been developed to overcome these challenges. Here I briefly review key historical aspects of positive-strand RNA virus reverse genetics, describe some recent reverse genetic innovations, particularly as applied to flaviviruses and coronaviruses, and discuss their benefits and limitations within the larger context of rigorous genetic analysis.