For the last year, I've been self-learning synthetic biology by working to become one of the few people to have ever genetically modified fungi in a diy lab environment[1][2][3]. It occurred to me that genetic engineering is largely a process of hacking biosynthetic pathways; that is, we take heterologous genes from organisms which have evolved novel biochemical pathways and we put them into other organisms that are really good at biosynthesizing those compounds at-scale (like Saccharomyces cerevisiae aka yeast).

One thing I've observed is there seems to be no universal well-annotated structured database for biosynthetic pathways. Updates and additions to known pathways are published unstructured in papers, often in graphical form, presenting even more challenging for structuring the data.

Were this to exist, it would be possible to build an app that let you easily design DNA plasmids for testing all kinds of incredible biosynthesis experiments. For instance, it would be able to select an organism [E. coli], enter your starting substrate [glucose], select a desired metabolite [psilocybin] and out would come a DNA sequence for a plasmid that contains are the necessary parts, promoters, genes and terminators for transforming E. coli to produce psilocybin.

In my opinion, such a tool could profoundly impact science, industry and human well-being.

[1] http://everymanbio.com/

[2] https://www.instagram.com/everymanbio/

[3] https://youtube.com/everymanbio