Introduction to Synthetic Biology notes

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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!
Personal tools
Past/present/future years