Synthetic biology
From Freepedia
Synthetic biology is a new area of research that combines science and engineering in order to design and build novel biological functions and systems. There are four main branches of research that define the field: Biology, Chemistry, Engineering, & Re-writing.
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Biology
Biologists are interested in learning more about how natural living systems work. One simple, direct way to test our current understanding of a natural living system is to build an instance (or version) of the system in accordance with our current understanding of the system. Michael Elowitz's early work on the Repressilator is one good example of such work. Michael had a model for how gene expression should work inside living cells. To test his model, he built a piece of DNA in accordance with his model, placed the DNA inside living cells, and watched what happened. Slight differences between observation and expectation highlight new science that may be well worth doing. Work of this sort often makes good use of mathematics to predict and study the dynamics of the biological system before experimentally constructing it. A wide variety of mathematical descriptions have been used with varying accuracy, including graph theory, Boolean networks, ordinary differential equations, stochastic differential equations, and Master equations (in order of increasing accuracy). Good examples include the work of Adam Arkin and Alexander van Oudenaarden.
Chemistry
Biological sytems are physical systems that are made up of chemicals. Around 100 years ago, the science of chemistry went through a transition from studying natural chemicals to trying to design and build new chemicals. This transition led to the field of synthetic chemistry. In the same tradition, some aspects of synthetic biology can be viewed as an extension and application of synthetic chemistry to biology, and include work ranging from the creation of useful new biochemicals to studying the origins of life. Eric Kool's group at Stanford, Steven Benner's group at Florida, Carlos Bustamante's group at Berkeley, and Jack Szostak's group at Harvard are good examples of this tradition.
Engineering
Engineers view biology as a technology. Synthetic Biology includes the broad redefinition and expansion of biotechnology, with the ultimate goals of being able to design and build engineered biological systems that process information, manipulate chemicals, fabricate materials, produce energy, provide food, and maintain and enhance human health and our environment. One aspect of Synthetic Biology which distinguishes it from conventional genetic engineering is a heavy emphasis on developing foundational technologies that make the engineering of biology easier and more reliable. Good examples of engineering in Synthetic Biology include Tim Gardner's pioneering work on an engineered genetic latch, the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, and the intercollegiate Genetically Engineering Machine competition (iGEM).
Re-writing
Re-writers are Synthetic Biologists who are interested in testing the idea that natural biological systems are so complicated, that we would be better off re-building the natural systems that we care about, from the ground up, in order to provide engineered surrogates that are easier to understand and interact with. Re-writers draw inspiration from refactoring, a process sometimes used to improve computer software. Drew Endy's group has done some preliminary work on re-writing (e.g., Refactoring Bacteriophage T7).
History
In 1978 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Werner Arber, Daniel Nathans and Hamilton O. Smith for the discovery of restriction enzymes and their application to problems of molecular genetics. In an editorial comment in the journal Gene Waclaw Szybalski wrote: "The work on restriction nucleases not only permits us easily to construct recombinant DNA molecules and to analyze individual genes but also has led us into the new era of synthetic biology where not only existing genes are described and analyzed but also new gene arrangements can be constructed and evaluated" (Gene 1978, 4, p 181).
Key Enabling Technologies
- (please see discussion page for ideas about what to include here)
External links
- Synthetic Biology community Wiki, hosted by MIT & Harvard researchers
- Synthetic Biology in Practice, a blog by Howard Salis
- Synthetic biology at LBL
- Jim Collin's Lab at Boston University
- Codon Devices: A Synthetic Biology Startup
- Drew Endy's Lab @ MIT
- Synthetic Biology Project @ Mt.Sinai/SLRI
