SynBioFromLeukipposInstitute

*Simple, IP-Free, scarless cloning in bacteria*

http://bit.ly/10OBwLS

*Students as Collaborators in Systems Biology Research*

by
Susan McClatchy, Deborah McGann, Robert Gotwals, Amanda Baskett,  Gary Churchill

"In his 1854 speech at the University of Lille, Louis Pasteur stated "In the fields of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind." Preparation for scientific inquiry is critical for the future of research, yet opportunities are rare in the early stages of education. This discrepancy can be resolved by immersing students in genuine research activities as early as possible. We have created an experience for high school students to engage in and contribute to ongoing research. We prepare students to formulate and test hypotheses using computational tools and data collected in our laboratory, or available from public repositories."


http://bit.ly/118Z1uC

Gen9 Launches GeneBytes™ to Enable Gene-Scale Synthetic Biology http://bit.ly/1765q1K

by
Lee BR, Cho S, Song Y, Kim SC, Cho BK.

"Synthetic biology is an emerging discipline for designing and synthesizing predictable, measurable, controllable, and transformable biological systems. These newly designed biological systems have great potential for the development of cheaper drugs, green fuels, biodegradable plastics, and targeted cancer therapies over the coming years. Fortunately, our ability to quickly and accurately engineer biological systems that behave predictably has been dramatically expanded by significant advances in DNA-sequencing, DNA-synthesis, and DNA-editing technologies. Here, we review emerging technologies and methodologies in the field of building designed biological systems, and we discuss their future perspectives."

http://bit.ly/19jZ8ec

The socionatural engineering of reductionist metaphors: a political ecology of synthetic biology http://bit.ly/172Q12i

Synthetic Biology courses: http://bit.ly/15pHuCt

by

Yang JE, Choi SY, Shin JH, Park SJ, Lee SY.

"Due to our increasing concerns on environmental problems and limited fossil resources, biobased production of chemicals and materials through biorefinery has been attracting much attention. Optimization of the metabolic performance of microorganisms, the key biocatalysts for the efficient production of the desired target bioproducts, has been achieved by metabolic engineering. Metabolic engineering allowed more efficient production of polyhydroxyalkanoates, a family of microbial polyesters. More recently, non-natural polyesters containing lactate as a monomer have also been produced by one-step fermentation of engineered bacteria. Systems metabolic engineering integrating traditional metabolic engineering with systems biology, synthetic biology, protein/enzyme engineering through directed evolution and structural design, and evolutionary engineering, enabled microorganisms to efficiently produce natural and non-natural products. Here, we review the strategies for the metabolic engineering of microorganisms for the in vivo biosynthesis of lactate-containing polyesters and for the optimization of whole cell metabolism to efficiently produce lactate-containing polyesters. Also, major problems to be solved to further enhance the production of lactate-containing polyesters are discussed."

http://1.usa.gov/17bFFx1

by
James A. J. Arpino, Edward J. Hancock, James Anderson, Mauricio Barahona, Guy-Bart V. Stan, Antonis Papachristodoulou and Karen Polizzi

"Synthetic Biology is the "Engineering of Biology" - it aims to use a forward-engineering design cycle based on specifications, modelling, analysis, experimental implementation, testing and validation to modify natural or design new, synthetic biology systems so that they behave in a predictable fashion. Motivated by the need for truly plug-and-play synthetic biological components we present a comprehensive review of ways in which the various parts of a biological system can be modified systematically. In particular, we review the list of 'dials' that are available to the designer and discuss how they can be modelled, tuned and implemented. The dials are categorized according to whether they operate at the global, transcriptional, translational or post translational level and the resolution that they operate at. We end this review with a discussion on the relative advantages and disadvantages of some dials over others."


http://bit.ly/143s9Fl

PhD thesis by
 Victoria Jane Jackson

(congratulations!)

"Individual cells in a genetically identical population, exposed to the same environment, can show great variation in their protein expression levels. This is due to noise, which is inherent in many biological processes, due in part to the low molecule numbers and probabilistic interactions which lead to stochasticity. Much of the work in the field of noise and its propagation in gene expression networks, whether it is experimental, modelling or theoretical, has been conducted on networks/systems that occur within a single cell. However, cells do not exist solely in isolation and understanding how cells are able to coordinate their behaviour despite this noise is an interesting area of expansion for the field. In this study, a synthetic intercellular communication system was designed that allows the investigation of how noise is propagated in intercellular communication. The communication system consists of separate sender and receiver cells incorporating components of the Lux quorum sensing system of Vibrio fischeri. The sender cell was designed so that the production of the signalling molecule, 3-oxohexanoyl homoserine lactone, is able to be controlled by addition of isopropyl-β-D-thio-galactoside (IPTG) and monitored via a reporter gene. The receiver cell was designed with a dual reporter system to enable the response of the cell to the signalling molecule to be monitored and the intrinsic and extrinsic noise contributions to the total noise to be calculated. Sender and the receiver cells were engineered in Escherichia coli. The functionality of the receiver cells was tested in the presence of known concentrations of the signalling molecule. The population response and the noise characteristics of the receiver cells in the homogeneous environment were determined from single cell measurements. The functionality of the sender cells was tested in the presence of a range of IPTG concentrations and the induction of expression from the LacI-repressible promoter was monitored. Mathematical models of the system were developed. Stochastic simulations of the models were used to investigate any unexplained behaviour seen in the characterisation of the cells. The full functionality of the intercellular communication system was then tested by growing the receiver in the collected media of the induced sender cells. The response of the receiver cells to the signalling molecule in the media was again characterised using single cell measurements of the reporter expression levels. The analysis of mixed populations of the sender and receiver cells was hampered by the technical limitations of the instruments used for the single cell measurements. Difficulties were encountered in simultaneous and specific measurement of the three reporter genes. Two methods for overcoming this issue were proposed using microscopy, and one of these methods was shown to have potential in overcoming the issue."


 http://bit.ly/17nHNT7