Cambridge website for Synthetic Biology Resources
 
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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. 

 

www.synbio.org.uk

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SynBio calendar

  • 18 Feb

    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...

  • 17 Mar

    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...

  • 09 Apr

    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...

  • 09 Jun

    (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...

  • 09 Jul

    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,...

  • 30 Jul

    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...

18 Feb - 23 Mar
09 Apr - 15 Jun
09 Jul - 13 Aug

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Synbio news:
22 Jan 2012

Production of amorphadiene in yeast, and its conversion to dihydroartemisinic acid, precursor to the antimalarial agent artemisinin [Applied Biological Sciences]: "Malaria, caused by Plasmodium sp, results in almost one million deaths and over 200 million new infections annually. The World Health Organization has recommended that artemisinin-based combination therapies be used for treatment of malaria. Artemisinin is a sesquiterpene lactone isolated from the plant Artemisia annua. However, the supply and price of artemisinin fluctuate greatly, and an alternative production method would be valuable to increase availability. We describe progress toward the goal of developing a supply of semisynthetic artemisinin based on production of the artemisinin precursor amorpha-4,11-diene by fermentation from engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and its chemical conversion to dihydroartemisinic acid, which can be subsequently converted to artemisinin. Previous efforts to produce artemisinin precursors used S. cerevisiae S288C overexpressing selected genes of the mevalonate pathway [Ro et al. (2006) Nature 440:940–943]. We have now overexpressed every enzyme of the mevalonate pathway to ERG20 in S. cerevisiae CEN.PK2, and compared production to CEN.PK2 engineered identically to the previously engineered S288C strain. Overexpressing every enzyme of the mevalonate pathway doubled artemisinic acid production, however, amorpha-4,11-diene production was 10-fold higher than artemisinic acid. We therefore focused on amorpha-4,11-diene production. Development of fermentation processes for the reengineered CEN.PK2 amorpha-4,11-diene strain led to production of > 40 g/L product. A chemical process was developed to convert amorpha-4,11-diene to dihydroartemisinic acid, which could subsequently be converted to artemisinin. The strains and procedures described represent a complete process for production of semisynthetic artemisinin."

(Via PNAS - RSS feed of Early Edition articles.)

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