SynBioFromLeukipposInstitute

Review by

Cheng A, Lu TK.
"Over the past decade, synthetic biology has emerged as an engineering discipline for biological systems. Compared with other substrates, biology poses a unique set of engineering challenges resulting from an incomplete understanding of natural biological systems and tools for manipulating them. To address these challenges, synthetic biology is advancing from developing proof-of-concept designs to focusing on core platforms for rational and high-throughput biological engineering. These platforms span the entire biological design cycle, including DNA construction, parts libraries, computational design tools, and interfaces for manipulating and probing synthetic circuits. The development of these enabling technologies requires an engineering mindset to be applied to biology, with an emphasis on generalizable techniques in addition to application-specific designs. This review aims to discuss the progress and challenges in synthetic biology and to illustrate areas where synthetic biology may impact biomedical engineering and human health. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering Volume 14 is July 15, 2012. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/catalog/pubdates.aspx for revised estimates."
http://1.usa.gov/JYr9cu

by

Garg A, Lohmueller JJ, Silver PA, Armel TZ.
"The ability to engineer biological circuits that process and respond to complex cellular signals has the potential to impact many areas of biology and medicine. Transcriptional activator-like effectors (TALEs) have emerged as an attractive component for engineering these circuits, as TALEs can be designed de novo to target a given DNA sequence. Currently, however, the use of TALEs is limited by degeneracy in the site-specific manner by which they recognize DNA. Here, we propose an algorithm to computationally address this problem. We apply our algorithm to design 180 TALEs targeting 20 bp cognate binding sites that are at least 3 nt mismatches away from all 20 bp sequences in putative 2 kb human promoter regions. We generated eight of these synthetic TALE activators and showed that each is able to activate transcription from a targeted reporter. Importantly, we show that these proteins do not activate synthetic reporters containing mismatches similar to those present in the genome nor a set of endogenous genes predicted to be the most likely targets in vivo. Finally, we generated and characterized TALE repressors comprised of our orthogonal DNA binding domains and further combined them with shRNAs to accomplish near complete repression of target gene expression.2
http://1.usa.gov/LNkZhA

by

Andrew Jermy
"The complex regulatory systems that control the expression of gene clusters in bacteria can make it difficult to alter the functional properties of such clusters or to transfer them between organisms. Now Temme et al.Klebsiella oxytoca and replaced them with synthetic genetic components."http://bit.ly/Jj7XJx

In this fascinating talk Christopher Bradley shows us that our world is about to change radically thanks to the promise of Synthetic Biology. About Christopher Bradley Christopher is a student at NYU ...

http://bit.ly/JbcFLx

by

Correa E, Sletta H, Ellis DI, Hoel S, Ertesvåg H, Ellingsen TE, Valla S, Goodacre R.

"Alginate is an important medical and commercial product and currently is isolated from seaweeds. Certain microorganisms also produce alginate and these polymers have the potential to replace seaweed alginates in some applications, mainly because such production will allow much better and more reproducible control of critical qualitative polymer properties. The research conducted here presents the development of a new approach to this problem by analysing a transposon insertion mutant library constructed in an alginate-producing derivative of the Pseudomonas fluorescens strain SBW25. The procedure is based on the non-destructive and reagent-free method of Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy which is used to generate a complex biochemical infrared fingerprint of the medium after bacterial growth. First, we investigate the potential differences caused by the growth media fructose and glycerol on the bacterial phenotype and alginate synthesis in 193 selected P. fluorescens mutants and show that clear phenotypic differences are observed in the infrared fingerprints. In order to quantify the level of the alginate we also report the construction and interpretation of multivariate partial least squares regression models which were able to quantify alginate levels successfully with typical normalized root-mean-square error in predictions of only approximately 14 %. We have demonstrated that this high-throughput approach can be implemented in alginate screens and we believe that this FT-IR spectroscopic methodology, when combined with the most appropriate chemometrics, could easily be modified for the quantification of other valuable microbial products and play a valuable screening role for synthetic biology."

Engineering and Control of Biological Systems: A New Way to Tackle Complex Diseases

by
Menolascina F, Siciliano V, di Bernardo D.
"The ongoing merge between engineering and biology has contributed to the emerging field of Synthetic Biology. The defining features of this new discipline are abstraction and standardisation of biological parts, decoupling between parts to prevent undesired cross-talking, and the application of quantitative modelling of synthetic genetic circuits in order to guide their design. Most of the efforts in the field of synthetic biology in the last decade have been devoted to the design and development of functional gene circuits in prokaryotes and unicellular eukaryotes. Researchers have used synthetic biology not only to engineer new functions in the cell, but also to build simpler models of endogenous gene regulatory network to gain knowledge of the "rules" governing their wiring diagram. However, the need for innovative approaches to study and modify complex signalling and regulatory networks in mammalian cells and multicellular organisms has prompted advances of Synthetic Biology also in these species, thus contributing to develop innovative ways to tackle human diseases. In this work, we will review the latest progress in synthetic biology and the most significant developments achieved so far, both in unicellular and multicellular organisms, with emphasis to human health."
http://1.usa.gov/JE4h3m

Crowd funding: A new exiting option for financing biomedical research!

Crowd funding
Kicksatrter
http://www.kickstarter.com/
IndieGoGo
http://www.indiegogo.com/
RocketHub
http://www.rockethub.com/
Microryza
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/04/12/meet-microryza-crowd-funding-for-scientific-research/?utm_source=GooglePlus
https://www.microryza.com/
Crowdfunding is the future of science
http://scifundchallenge.org/blog/2012/05/09/crowdfunding-is-the-future-of-science/

Jobs act
http://watch.bnn.ca/#clip674892
http://watch.bnn.ca/#clip674899
http://watch.bnn.ca/#clip674902