From the Nuts and Bolts of Synthetic Biology to Engineering New Genomes

Synthetic biology seeks to understand and derive value from biology via its re-design and synthesis using engineering principles. Despite its early stage, synthetic biology has already shown great potential to make both scientific breakthroughs and yield applications. Within synthetic biology are emerging areas that include re-wiring of gene regulation for novel cellular functions, new methods for DNA synthesis and assembly, rational DNA part design and the use of mathematical modelling and software tools to inform biological design. The one area of synthetic biology that has had the greatest impact on the public’s imagination so far has been genome engineering, via the complete synthesis and operation of a cellular genome in 2010 by Craig Venter and others. While this work provided a landmark moment for the subject, we are still far away from understanding how to rationally go from a set of DNA parts to designer genomes. In this talk Dr Ellis will discuss his labs efforts to tie-together parts-based synthetic biology in yeast and genome engineering of yeast towards the end goal of writing custom genomes for specific applications.