SynBioBeta Interviews Professor Jason Chin on Constructive Bio's Expanded Genetic Code and Novel Polymer Applications

Following Professor Jason Chin’s keynote at SynBioBeta 2025 in San Jose, a talk that left the audience visibly stunned by the sheer ambition of reprogramming life itself, SynBioBeta’s Mohammed Soufi secured an exclusive follow-up interview with Jason in Paris, on the sidelines of the iGEM Grand Jamboree.

The resulting feature is one of the most compelling portraits yet of a scientist operating at the absolute frontier of biology. In the conversation, Chin lays out – with characteristic clarity and quiet audacity – how his dual-track work at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and at Constructive Bio has systematically dismantling the constraints evolution has imposed on living systems. By combining fully synthetic genomes with precisely engineered genetic codes and orthogonal translation machinery, his teams are enabling cells to synthesise entirely new classes of molecules: polymers with properties unattainable by natural chemistry, sequence-defined non-canonical biopolymers, and therapeutics that operate far beyond the limits of ribosomal biosynthesis as we know it. At the heart of the discussion stands Syn61 – now widely regarded as one of the landmark achievements in the history of genome engineering. Syn61 was the clearest demonstration to date that life can be liberated from the universal code that has governed biology for billions of years. It was followed by Syn57. Through meticulous, genome-wide recoding, Chin’s team compressed the canonical 64-codon genetic code into a streamlined 57-codon framework. As a result, Syn57 it is the largest deliberate rewrite of a living genome ever accomplished.

As Chin explains, Syn61 and Syn57 are more than a technical tour de force – they demonstrate the foundational platform for a new era of biological programming. Freed codons can now be reassigned at will, opening vast chemical space for incorporating non-canonical amino acids, creating genetic firewalls, and ultimately designing organisms whose biochemistry operates under rules we define. The full interview is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how close we now stand to an inflection point: the moment when biology transitions from a science of discovery to a true engineering discipline.

Read the complete feature on the newly relaunched SynBioBeta platform