Research

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Synthetic Biology underpins advances in the bioeconomy

Biological systems - including the simplest cells - exhibit a broad range of functions to thrive in their environment. Research in the Imperial College Centre for Synthetic Biology is focused on the possibility of engineering the underlying biochemical processes to solve many of the challenges facing society, from healthcare to sustainable energy. In particular, we model, analyse, design and build biological and biochemical systems in living cells and/or in cell extracts, both exploring and enhancing the engineering potential of biology. 

As part of our research we develop novel methods to accelerate the celebrated Design-Build-Test-Learn synthetic biology cycle. As such research in the Centre for Synthetic Biology highly multi- and interdisciplinary covering computational modelling and machine learning approaches; automated platform development and genetic circuit engineering ; multi-cellular and multi-organismal interactions, including gene drive and genome engineering; metabolic engineering; in vitro/cell-free synthetic biology; engineered phages and directed evolution; and biomimetics, biomaterials and biological engineering.

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Ciechonska:2016:10.1039/c5ib00271k,
author = {Ciechonska, M and Grob, A and Isalan, M},
doi = {10.1039/c5ib00271k},
journal = {Integrative Biology},
pages = {383--393},
title = {From noise to synthetic nucleoli: can synthetic biology achieve new insights?},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/c5ib00271k},
volume = {8},
year = {2016}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Synthetic biology aims to re-organise and control biological components to make functional devices. Along the way, the iterative process of designing and testing gene circuits has the potential to yield many insights into the functioning of the underlying chassis of cells. Thus, synthetic biology is converging with disciplines such as systems biology and even classical cell biology, to give a new level of predictability to gene expression, cell metabolism and cellular signalling networks. This review gives an overview of the contributions that synthetic biology has made in understanding gene expression, in terms of cell heterogeneity (noise), the coupling of growth and energy usage to expression, and spatiotemporal considerations. We mainly compare progress in bacterial and mammalian systems, which have some of the most-developed engineering frameworks. Overall, one view of synthetic biology can be neatly summarised as “creating in order to understand.”
AU  - Ciechonska,M
AU  - Grob,A
AU  - Isalan,M
DO  - 10.1039/c5ib00271k
EP  - 393
PY  - 2016///
SN  - 1757-9708
SP  - 383
TI  - From noise to synthetic nucleoli: can synthetic biology achieve new insights?
T2  - Integrative Biology
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/c5ib00271k
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/33575
VL  - 8
ER  -
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