Introduction to Synthetic Biology notes

From 2006.igem.org

Slide 2: Outline

The vision of synthetic biology (Slides 2 to 5)

• I would like to answer the questions:
• What is Synthetic Biology?
• What are the goals of Synthetic Biology?
• Why is Synthetic Biology needed?

Foundations of engineering biology (Slides 6 to 11)

• I would like to answer the question:
• What is needed to make Synthetic Biology a successful discipline?

PoPS and Standard Assembly (Slides 12 and 13)

• Want to describe one fundamental concept: PoPS
• Want to describe how parts can be assembled in an uniform way.

Slide 3: Biology is a Technology

Mention applications of Synthetic Biology:

• produce medical agents
• provide energy sources
• detect pollutants
• construct surfaces for nanoscale materials fabrication
• characterize physical performance limits of eukaryotic gene expression
• study and control of
  • cell division
  • animal development
  • aging
  • cancer
• (cost effective production of an anti-malaria drug precursor)

Slide 5: Synthetic Biology

About ‘interdisciplinary’: Why is Synthetic Biology interesting for these disciplines:

• Biology: Test the current understanding
• Chemists: Biology = Chemistry (for them)!
  • Create novel molecular systems
  • ‘synthetic chemistry’
• Engineers: Biology = Technology = novel engineering discipline

Slide 9: Standardization

Keyword ‘Standards’:

• Mention the following necessary standardizations:
  • Basic biological functions (example: promoter activity)
  • Experimental measurements (example: protein concentrations)
  • System operations (example: media, growth rate, environmental conditions)

Keyword ‘Development of Techniques’:

• Need to develop techniques that support:
  • The definition
  • The characterization
  • The use
  • And the description of biological parts
• Mention the registry that tries to do that!