GMOs Are Old Hat. Synthetically Modified Food Is The New Frontier

The vanillin made through synthetic biology will be used in flavorings sold in the U.S. by International Flavorings & Fragrances. iStockphoto hide caption

The vanillin made through synthetic biology will be used in flavorings sold in the U.S. by International Flavorings & Fragrances.

Genetically modified organisms are ancient, technologically speaking. Though some consumers may just be discovering that they're in the food system (and getting riled up about labeling them), farmers have had access to them since 1996.

But there's a new technology on the scene, adding a twist to the already complicated conversation about GMOs in our food: synthetic biology.

In essence, synthetic biology is all about designing and building workhorse organisms that can make things more efficiently than nature. According to Todd Kuiken, a senior program associate with the Synthetic Biology Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, "It's the next stage of genetic engineering."

While there's been far more hype around synthetic biology's potential to create drugs, biofuels and even designer creatures, some of the most recent "synbio" products to hit the market are actually (somewhere) in our food.

Synbio vanillin, marketed as an alternative to artificial vanilla flavor, was rolled out in the U.S. this summer. But don't expect to be able to locate it in your local supermarket. Its maker, International Flavors & Fragrances, the U.S. partner of a Swiss company that invented the technology, is keeping mum about which food companies are using it.

While genetically modified seeds typically contain genes from another organism that bestow a plant with a new defense mechanism, making synbio food involves taking genes from a plant and giving them to yeast to make the same compound the plant makes, but much more efficiently, via fermentation.

Evolva is the Swiss synthetic biology company that developed the synbio vanilla; it also has synbio saffron, the antioxidant resveratrol and stevia in the pipeline. All are expected to go to market in the next two years. The main advantage of synthetic biology foods, Evolva claims, is that they can be made in a lab, rather than in a field that has to be tended by laborers and is subject to unpredictable variables like weather.

As we've reported, saffron is one of the most labor-intensive and expensive crops in the world (there are lots of fake versions out there). And the sweet molecule in the stevia plant occurs only in tiny quantities well below 1 percent of the plant's total composition, which drives its cost up, too. Evolva's synbio resveratrol, the antioxidant that occurs naturally in red wine and chocolate, will be available this fall, and potentially snapped up by supplement companies peddling the chemical's supposed anti-aging benefits.

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GMOs Are Old Hat. Synthetically Modified Food Is The New Frontier