Compiled by Jim Haseloff at the University of Cambridge.
This site contains details of recent papers and activity in Synthetic Biology, with particular emphasis on: (i) development of standards in biology and DNA parts, (ii) microbial and (iii) plant systems, (iv) research and teaching in the field at the University of Cambridge, (v) hardware for scientific computing and instrumentation, (vi) tools for scientific productivity and collected miscellany.
Technology is driving revolutionary changes in biology. Over the past decade, scientists and engineers have begun to define the path forward in the genomic era. Systems Biology has arisen...
Now that we know the sequences of many genomes, from a wide variety of organisms and even from individuals with unique characteristics, many researchers have turned to making intentional...
The developments within synthetic biology promise to change the world in significant ways. Yet synthetic biology is largely unrecognized within conservation. The purpose of the meeting...
(Re-)constructing and Re-programming Life This conference will provide an in-depth discussion forum among practitioners of the various fields underlying Synthetic Biology. It aims to...
The BioBricks Foundation is pleased to announce The BioBricks Foundation Synthetic Biology 6.0 Conference (SB6.0), which will take place on July 9-11, 2013 at Imperial College, London,...
This course will focus on how the complexity of biological systems, combined with traditional engineering approaches, results in the emergence of new design principles for synthetic...
A simpler way to modify microbes could help produce biofuels and drugs efficiently.
Genetically modified microbes could perform many useful jobs, from making biofuels and drugs, to cleaning up toxic waste. But designing the complex biochemical pathways inside such microbes is a time-consuming process of trial and error.
Christopher Voigt, an associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco, hopes to change that with software that automates the creation of "genetic circuits" in microbes. These circuits are the pathways of genes, proteins, and other biomolecules that the cells use to perform a particular task, such as breaking down sugar and turning it into fuel. Voigt and colleagues have so far made basic circuit components in E. coli. They are working with the large California biotechnology company Life Technologies to develop software that would let bioengineers design complete genetic circuits more easily.
Designing a microbe for a particular task would then be much like writing a new computer program, says Voigt. Just as programmers do not have to think about how electrons move through the gates in an integrated circuit, he says, biological engineers may eventually be able to design circuits for genes, proteins, and other biomolecules at a level of abstraction. "If we apply computational processes to things that bacteria can already do, we can get complete control over making spider silk, or drugs, or other chemicals," he says.
Certain types of circuits could, for instance, help regulate the activity of bacteria that produce biofuels. Instead of outside controls, internal circuits could maintain the chemical levels and other conditions needed to keep bacteria producing at high yields. "We're trying to make the cell understand where it is and what it should be doing based on its understanding of the world," says Voigt. Trying to design such a control circuit without the help of a computer would take a lot of trial and error.
"This breakthrough work in synthetic biology expands our capacity to construct functional, programmable bacteria," says James Collins, professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University who is not affiliated with Voigt's team. Collins observes that the California researchers have learned to combine simple circuits in individual cells to make a more complex circuit at the population level. "This represents an important step towards harnessing the power of synthetic ecosystems for biotech applications," he says.
The University of California researchers are now entering the second year of a research agreement with Life Technologies to develop software to automate the biological design process. "The vision is to take these software modules and develop them so that the process of biological parts selection and circuit design is far more automated and simplified than it is today," says Todd Peterson, vice president of synthetic biology research and development at the company. The company hopes to incorporate most of the software modules being designed by Voigt's group into its Vector NTI software by the end of spring 2012.