‘Programmable Planet’ Review: Biology’s Big Bonus

After nearly a decade of effort, researchers at a small biotechnology company in Cambridge, Mass., were struggling. Founded by four world-class scientists in 2010, the startup had intended to bioengineer a fragile strip of genetic information, called messenger RNA (mRNA), into medicines for cardiovascular and immunological conditions. But it had little success. In 2013 the company pivoted to using mRNA to stimulate the immune system, but six years later, despite having raised $1 billion, it still had neither revenue nor an approved product. Then, in 2022, the same company, named Moderna—along with another startup, Germany’s BioNTech—would earn the gratitude of the world for inventing the vaccines that transformed the fight against Covid-19.

Moderna and BioNTech serve as the most prominent representation to date of the promise and ambition of the emerging science known as “synthetic biology.” As Ted Anton, an English professor at DePaul University, explains in “Programmable Planet,” the discipline focuses on “engineering life forms to make what humans need.” In a sense, Mr. Anton concedes, such engineering has existed for thousands of years—in the cultivation of crops and the use of fermentation to produce beer, wine and cheese. What’s new today “is the speed, scale, and power of researchers’ ability to remake life.”

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