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Research

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{Reeve:2014:10.3389/fbioe.2014.00001,
author = {Reeve, B and Hargest, T and Gilbert, C and Ellis, T},
doi = {10.3389/fbioe.2014.00001},
journal = {Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology},
pages = {1--1},
title = {Predicting translation initiation rates for designing synthetic biology.},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2014.00001},
volume = {2},
year = {2014}
}

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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - In synthetic biology, precise control over protein expression is required in order to construct functional biological systems. A core principle of the synthetic biology approach is a model-guided design and based on the biological understanding of the process, models of prokaryotic protein production have been described. Translation initiation rate is a rate-limiting step in protein production from mRNA and is dependent on the sequence of the 5'-untranslated region and the start of the coding sequence. Translation rate calculators are programs that estimate protein translation rates based on the sequence of these regions of an mRNA, and as protein expression is proportional to the rate of translation initiation, such calculators have been shown to give good approximations of protein expression levels. In this review, three currently available translation rate calculators developed for synthetic biology are considered, with limitations and possible future progress discussed.
AU  - Reeve,B
AU  - Hargest,T
AU  - Gilbert,C
AU  - Ellis,T
DO  - 10.3389/fbioe.2014.00001
EP  - 1
PY  - 2014///
SN  - 2296-4185
SP  - 1
TI  - Predicting translation initiation rates for designing synthetic biology.
T2  - Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2014.00001
UR  - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25152877
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/84345
VL  - 2
ER  -