Conclusions and Outlook Systems and Synthetic Biology

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From the course by University of Manchester

Industrial Biotechnology

151 ratings

University of Manchester

Industrial Biotechnology

151 ratings

Fossil fuels have been the primary energy source for society since the Industrial Revolution. They provide the raw material for the manufacture of many everyday products that we take for granted, including pharmaceuticals, food and drink, materials, plastics and personal care. As the 21st century progresses we need solutions for the manufacture of chemicals that are smarter, more predictable and more sustainable. Industrial biotechnology is changing how we manufacture chemicals and materials, as well as providing us with a source of renewable energy. It is at the core of sustainable manufacturing processes and an attractive alternative to traditional manufacturing technologies to commercially advance and transform priority industrial sectors yielding more and more viable solutions for our environment in the form of new chemicals, new materials and bioenergy. This course will cover the key enabling technologies that underpin biotechnology research including enzyme discovery and engineering, systems and synthetic biology and biochemical and process engineering. Much of this material will be delivered through lectures to ensure that you have a solid foundation in these key areas. We will also consider the wider issues involved in sustainable manufacturing including responsible research innovation and bioethics. In the second part of the course we will look at how these technologies translate into real world applications which benefit society and impact our everyday lives. This will include input from our industry stakeholders and collaborators working in the pharmaceutical, chemicals and biofuels industries. By the end of this course you will be able to: 1. Understand enzymatic function and catalysis. 2. Explain the technologies and methodologies underpinning systems and synthetic biology. 3. Explain the diversity of synthetic biology application and discuss the different ethical and regulatory/governance challenges involved in this research. 4. Understand the principles and role of bioprocessing and biochemical engineering in industrial biotechnology. 5. Have an informed discussion of the key enabling technologies underpinning research in industrial biotechnology 6. Give examples of industrial biotechnology products and processes and their application in healthcare, agriculture, fine chemicals, energy and the environment.

From the lesson

Methods in Systems and Synthetic Biology

Recent advances in our ability to read and write genome sequences on a large scale have led to an ambitious vision for a new generation of biotechnology, often referred to as Synthetic Biology. Synthetic Biology aims at turning biology into an engineering discipline, in which organism engineers use computational tools to design biological systems with novel valuable functionalities, which are then built using advanced high-throughput genetic engineering, and tested by rapid screening technologies that collect diagnostic molecular profiles to drive improved designs in an iterative design-build-test cycle. This module will introduce the engineering concepts that inform Synthetic Biology and the cutting-edge technologies that underlie our dramatically increasing ability to construct living systems with custom-made functionalities. All stages of the design-build-test cycle for novel biosystems will be discussed, with a special focus on their integration in a unified bioengineering platform. Examples will focus on the application of Synthetic Biology as an enabling technology for the bioindustry, especially for the improved microbial production of high-value chemicals and drugs. A section on responsible research and innovation will explore the transformative potential of this innovative technology within a broader socio-economic context, creating awareness of the ethical and political implications of research in this field.

Introduction to Synthetic Biology: Visions for Biotechnology 2.06:27

Designing biological systems: Computational modelling and systems biology9:10

Building biological systems I: Genome synthesis and genome editing9:25

Controlling and engineering pathways in Synthetic Biology9:00

Testing Biological Systems Biological debugging using metabolomics8:12

Deploying biological systems: Perspectives on Responsible Research & Innovation and bioethics I5:24

Conclusions and Outlook Systems and Synthetic Biology6:40

Meet the Instructors

Prof. Nicholas Turner
Deputy Director
Manchester Institute of Biotechnology
Prof. Nigel Scrutton
Director
Manchester Institute of Biotechnology

Welcome to this final module of the Introduction to Synthetic Biology.

In the previous modules, you would have seen a lot of the technological

developments that drive the rapid progression through the design, build and

test cycle for the engineering of improved biological systems.

We will have heard some of the implications of this development for

responsible research and innovation.

In the next few slides, I want to introduce

some of the general trends that emerge from looking at this development.

One major trend is that synthetic biology is becoming easier and

cheaper very rapidly.

And that makes the technologies available to ever increasing ranges

of applications and makes them available to communities that previously

couldn't realistically do genetic manipulation.

One example of that development is the iGEM competition.

A student competition and international meeting of

students working on synthetic biology every summer and

competing on the engineering of genetically modified machines.

Participants come from all over the world and

they meet in the autumn to compare their results.

While this is a student project, It is by no means lacking in science.

The projects that students are doing in the iGEM competition

are demonstrations of the enormous potential of synthetic biology,

extremely creative applications of the new technologies and

illustration of how the methods for genetically engineering

microbes are becoming more accessible and easy to use.

The projects can range from playful things like the generation of bacteria,

that smell of bananas, but they can also be very applied like the production of

blood substitutes in E.coli.

Some of them are rather technology driven, for instance,

the production of spider silk in bacteria, or they aim for environmental improvement,

like say, E.coli project that produces a palm oil substitute in E.coli

to protect rain forests in developing countries and the diverse species.

Other examples like the cell-bots and the taxicoli are engineering microbes to

deliver drugs in the human body, targeting the disease tissue

very specifically.

And there are even developments trying to use

genetic engineering in eukaryotes, for instance in frogs.

Although that project was more philosophy-driven than technology-driven

at that point.

One of the major features of the iGEM competition is that it emphasizes

the reusability of the building blocks created by synthetic pathways.

Every student team in the end of their project delivers the bio bricks that

they have produced to a central repository where they can later be reused by

next year's teams.

And that leads to the development of a huge resource of building blocks for

all kinds of applications.

And here on this slide, a few examples are shown ranging from the building blocks for

individual biosynthetic pathways down to therapeutic kits for

assembling artificial viruses.

It also illustrates the simplicity of the technology by now.

The 3A assembly kit, for

instance, makes synthetic biology available to high school students.

Another major trend is that synthetic biology is very rapidly moving

towards real life industrial applications.

The intention here is to develop a biology based alternative to

the entire petrochemical industry starting from cheap biomass feedstocks,

like wood chips or straw, one moves to increasing the sophisticated

chemicals in the end really having a supply chain for

chemicals in all possible imaginable applications.

Obviously all of this means that synthetic biology is emerging as

a disruptive technology that presents a vast range of new opportunities.

But also together with that vast range of new challenges,

and because of that there is an entire parallel industry creating

reports on the implications synthetic biology will have in all areas of society.

Ethical implications, industrial applications, national academies

of sciences, various government agencies, non-governmental organizationz,

they all are contributing to this very lively debate.

I think, synthetic biology is probably the only

area of the life sciences where the number of policy reports

and review papers is larger than the number of the original

science publications.

The societal debate, of course, uses different metaphors for

the extreme genetic engineering that synthetic biology tries to achieve.

It's not so much focusing on the engineering aspects as the LEGO brick

metaphor or the electronic circuit metaphor.

Instead, the debate focuses on metaphors like synthetic biologists are playing God;

they are interfering with nature.

Or synthetic biologists are Dr.

Frankensteins that are producing monster cells with potential risks for society.

All of this is part of a very important debate that needs to be had for

any kind of emerging new technology.

And I hope that the modules in this series have provided you with

scientific background to make useful and

informed reasonable contribution to the this kind of discourse.

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