How Scientists Plan to Grow Cities Out of Living Organisms

think a future where there is no need to foreshorten down a Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and and reshape that peeled cloth into a chair or tabular array . Instead , we could produce our piece of furniture by custom - engineering moss or mushroom . Perhaps glowing bacterium will get off our city , and we ’ll be able to bring back extinct species , or pass over out Lyme disease — or perhaps even terraform Mars . Synthetic biological science could help us fulfill all that , and more .

That ’s the message of the later video recording in a fresh mini - documentary World Wide Web series call in Explorations , focusing on potentially transformative areas of scientific research : genomics , artificial intelligence , neurobiology , transportation , place exploration , and synthetic biological science . It ’s a passion task of entrepreneur Bryan Johnson , founder of OS Fund and the payments process ship’s company Braintree .

There ’s a good selection of sport interpreter in the video . You ’ve got innovator like Harvard ’s George Church and Drew Endy of Stanford University blend in with visionaries like Reshma Shetty ofGinkgo Bioworks(which design custom microbes , like yeast that smell like grapes , and dreams of ramp up furniture from genetically tailor-make kingdom Fungi ) ; the folks atParis - based inauguration Glowee(who recall bioluminescence is the future of lighting ) ; and creative person / designerDaisy Ginsberg , who weaves synthetic biology into her creative project to reimagine systems intention .

“ The most stunning and consequential development of our clip is this : we have built tools of creation that more and more have the top executive to literally code any variety of world we imagine , ” Johnsonwrote earlier this yearat the Daily Dot about his design of the serial “ man-made biota allows us to program organisms to develop target . Genomics is starting to leave us to programme our bodies . A.I. allows us to build unexampled form of intelligence . ” He hop the series will inspire young people in particular to work up that visionary future world .

Not everyone is as crowing a sports fan as Johnson of synthetic biology and these other cutting - edge field of operations . Progress brings both promise and potential peril , after all . In 2012 , more than 100 environmental groupsissued a manifestocalling for a orbicular forbiddance on the use of synthetic organisms commercially until in force regulations and safety measures are in space . And anew Pew Research Center pollreleased last hebdomad found that most Americans remain fearful of so - visit “ designer babies , ” implanted brain chips and other biological enhancements .

Evenstrong advocate of synthetic biological science acknowledgethat there are many philosophic and ethical that need to be addressed regarding this speedily evolving field . But man-made biological science is here to continue . It ’s up to us to make certain that it ’s used responsibly .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.