The three body problem

Braiding innovation

I named this blog after a biological circuit that helped launch the academic discipline of synthetic biology. In 2000, two back to back Nature papers showed how engineered gene regulatory systems can interact to create complex biological behaviors. Setting up two genetic repressors in a negative feedback loop creates a simple bistable toggle switch: activating one represses the other in a self-reinforcing loop until the other is switched on. Adding one more repressor into the mix makes an oscillator.

Tuned the right way, the three repressors intertwine to form an unstable steady state, a dynamic interplay of ingredients that leads to complex clock-like behavior. In the years that followed, many other biological functions were modeled in simple synthetic systems, and many synthetic biologists speculated on how more and more complexity could be designed by assembling circuits together inside living cells.

Beyond its use in those days as a tool for trying to understand biology, the oscillator—a new dynamic state emerging from the interaction of multiple opinionated agents—is also a remarkably useful metaphor for all kinds of other messy dynamic systems in life.

Because when humans get together and do stuff, we inevitably encounter multiple constraints that push and pull on us and shape what we build. The simplifications of design thinking teach us to consider three often competing considerations: economic viability, technical feasibility, and customer desirability. Braiding these different perspectives together can enable a new kind of dynamic creativity. Indeed, neuroscientists who study the cognitive basis of that “aha!” moment model how different concepts are “braided” together in neural networks, creating emotional responses that attune us to the creative opportunity present at the intersection of different concepts.

Synthetic biology holds within itself a dynamic oxymoron in the same vein, bringing together seemingly incongruous concepts (artificial and natural) that through their tension enable new creative states. As synthetic biologists braid in different applications and problems, more instability is inevitably introduced. But tuned just right, perhaps something new and wonderful can emerge.