Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering
University of California, Berkeley
Director, University of California BioSTAR Program
Principal Investigator, Physical Biosciences Division
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Date: Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Time: 11AM-12PM
Location: Klaus 1116W

"Building Life from the Ground Up: Applications and Implications of Synthetic Biology"

Abstract:

Synthetic biology is the design and construction of new biological entities such as enzymes, genetic circuits, and cells or the redesign of existing biological systems. Synthetic biology builds on the advances in molecular, cell, and systems biology and seeks to transform biology in the same way that synthesis transformed chemistry and integrated circuit design transformed computing. Unlike many other areas of engineering, biology is incredibly non-linear and less predictable, and there is less knowledge of the parts and how they interact. Hence, the overwhelming physical details of natural biology (gene sequences, protein properties, biological systems) must be organized and recast via a set of design rules that hide information and manage complexity, thereby enabling the engineering of many-component integrated biological systems. It is only when this is accomplished that designs of significant scale will be possible.

Progress towards synthetic biology has only been made practical by the more recent advent of two foundational technologies, DNA sequencing and synthesis. Sequencing has increased our understanding of the components and organization of natural biological systems and synthesis has provided the ability to begin to test the designs of new, synthetic biological parts and systems. While these examples each individually demonstrate the incredible potential of synthetic biology, they also illustrate that many foundational scientific and engineering challenges must be solved in order to make the engineering of biology routine.