In this first lecture, we present a short history of biotechnology, starting with antiquity, when yeast was already used to make bread, cheese and spirits, and passing through a series of milestones such as the work of Louis Pasteur in the mid-19th century, the discovery of enzymes by Büchner (1897), the first biotechnological industrial productions (1915-1930), the antibiotic revolution (1940), ushering in the era of industrial microbiology, the genetic revolution with the discovery of the DNA double helix by Watson and Crick (1953) and the development of sequencing and recombinant protein production techniques (1970-1980), culminating in the sequencing of entire genomes (1995-..), including the human genome (2001), their chemical synthesis (2003-2008) and finally the advent of synthetic cells (2010).
All these tools make it possible to envisage a new biology, known as synthetic biology, based on organisms genetically and chemically modified to an unprecedented degree (introduction of unnatural metabolic pathways) to produce drugs, fuels, etc. This concept is illustrated by the presentation of the work of F. Romesberg at the Scripps Institute, who has just achieved the formidable feat of constructing a genome with 6, not 4, nucleic bases, and developing a living organism capable of replicating this DNA.
