Responsibility and intellectual property in synthetic biology: A proposal for using Responsible Research and Innovation as a basic framework for intellectual property decisions in synthetic biology

Synthetic biology (SynBio) is an engineering view of biotechnology that has the potential to increase the number and industrial utility of biotechnological applications by implementing engineering principles such as standardization and modularity. The boundaries between SynBio, biotechnology, and metabolic engineering are not always clear, but assessing SynBio in a wider sense—that of modeling‐based biotechnology and/or “sophisticated” metabolic engineering—we find that a significant number of applications and research articles have been generated in the past few years [1]. One of the best‐known examples is that of a synthetic pathway for producing artemisinic acid, a precursor to the antim…